Perplexed or angry I was always disinclined for speech; and it was only after things had arranged themselves in my mind, or I had mastered my indignation, that I would begin to feel communicative. But something prudential inside warned me that I could not afford to lose any friend I had; and although I was not prepared to confide my wrongs to Mr Coningham, I felt I might some day be glad of his counsel. CHAPTER XLV. UMBERDEN CHURCH. My companion chatted away, lauded my mare, asked if I had seen Clara lately, and how the library was getting on. I answered him carelessly, without even a hint at my troubles. ‘You seem out of spirits, Mr Cumbermede?’ he said. ‘You’ve been taking too little exercise. Let’s have a canter. It will do you good. Here’s a nice bit of sward.’ I was only too ready to embrace the excuse for dropping a conversation towards which I was unable to contribute my share. Having reached a small roadside inn, we gave our horses a little refreshment; after which, crossing a field or two by jumping the stiles, we entered the loveliest lane I had ever seen. It was so narrow that there was just room for horses to pass each other, and covered with the greenest sward rarely trodden. It ran through the midst of a wilderness of tall hazels. They stood up on both sides of it, straight and trim as walls, high above our heads as we sat on our horses; and the lane was so serpentine that we could never see further than a few yards ahead; while, towards the end, it kept turning so much in one direction that we seemed to be following the circumference of a little circle. It ceased at length at a small double-leaved gate of iron, to which we tied our horses before entering the churchyard. But instead of a neat burial-place, which the whole approach would have given us to expect, we found a desert. The grass was of extraordinary coarseness, and mingled with quantities of vile-looking weeds. Several of the graves had not even a spot of green upon them, but were mere heaps of yellow earth in huge lumps, mixed with large stones. There was not above a score of graves in the whole place, two or three of which only had gravestones on them. One lay open, with the rough yellow lumps all about it, and completed the desolation. The church was nearly square--small, but shapeless, with but four latticed windows, two on one side, one in the other, and the fourth in the east end. It was built partly of bricks and partly of flint stones, the walls bowed and bent, and the roof waved and broken. Its old age had gathered none of the graces of age to soften its natural ugliness, or elevate its insignificance. Except a few lichens, there was not a mark of vegetation about it. Not a single ivy leaf grew on its spotted and wasted walls. It gave a hopeless, pagan expression to the whole landscape--for it stood on a rising ground, from which we had an extensive prospect of height and hollow, cornfield and pasture and wood, away to the dim blue horizon.