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aves was in the air; and the night for all its mildness prophesied winter. Meynell seemed to himself to be moving on enchanted ground, beneath enchanted trees. The tension of his long talk with Norham, the cares of his leadership--the voices of a natural ambition, dropped away. Mary in a blue cloak, a white scarf wound about her head, summed up for him the pure beauty of nature and the night. For the first time he did not attempt to check the thrill in his veins; he began to hope. It was impossible to ignore the change in Mrs. Elsmere's attitude toward him. He had no idea what had caused it; but he felt it. And he realized also that through unseen and inexplicable gradations Mary had come mysteriously near to him. He dared not have spoken a word of love to her; but such feeling as theirs, however restrained, penetrates speech and gesture, and irresistibly makes all things new.
They spoke of the most trivial matters, and hardly noticed what they said. He all the time was thinking: "Beyond this tumult there will be rest some day--then I may speak. We could live hardly and simply--neither of us wants luxury. But now it would be unjust--it would bring too great a burden on her--and her poor mother. I must wait! But we shall see each other--we shall understand each other!"
Meanwhile she, on her side, would perhaps have given the world to share the struggle from which he debarred her.
Nevertheless, for both, it was an hour of happiness and hope.
CHAPTER XIII
"So I see your name this morning, Stephen, on their list."
Henry Barron held up a page of the Times and pointed to its first column.
"I sent it in some time ago."
"And pray what does your parish think of it?"
"They won't support me."
"Thank God!"
Barron rose majestically to his feet, and from the rug surveyed his thin, fair-haired son. Stephen had just ridden over from his own tiny vicarage, twelve mil