to Sir Charles, added to the natural restfulness of the place.  Now after the great achievements and responsibilities of his Eastern career he found retirement congenial.  The soft equable climate benefited his health.  Rough shooting and good fishing could be had in plenty—­stag-hunting, too, in Arnewood Forest, when he inclined to such sport.  The Hard was sufficiently easy of access from town for friends to come and stay with him.  Convenient for crossing to the Continent too, when he took his yearly cure at Aix or at Vichy, or went south for a couple of months, as last winter for instance, to Cette, Montpelier and across, by Pau, to the Atlantic seaboard at St. Sebastian, Biarritz, and Bayonne.

“When my father travels I go with him,” Damaris said, raising her head and looking at the young man with proud, deliberate eyes.  “We both suffered too much, we must never be separated again.  And when we go abroad, we go alone.  There is no one to give advice or interfere.  We take Hordle, to pack and look after the baggage.  We are always together, and I am always happy.  I wish we could live like that always, with no settled home.  But after a while, my father grows tired of hotels.  He begins to wish for the quiet of The Hard, and all the things he is accustomed to.  And then, naturally, I begin to wish for it too.”

From which statement, made as he judged with intention, Tom apprehended an attachment of no common order existing between these two persons, father and child.  If, as family gossip disapprovingly hinted, the affection given appeared to trench on exaggeration, the affection returned was of kindred quality, fervid, self-realized, absorbing, and absorbed.  Comparing it with his own humorously tolerant filial attitude, Tom felt at once contrite and injured.  The contrast was glaring.  But then, as he hastened to add—­though whether in extenuation of his own, or of his father’s, shortcomings remained open to question—­wasn’t the contrast between the slightly pompous, slightly bow-windowed, provincial, Tory cleric and this spare, inscrutable soldier and ruler, glaring likewise?  To demand that the one should either experience or inspire the same emotions as the other was palpably absurd!  Hence (comfortable conclusion!) neither he, Tom, nor the Archdeacon was really to blame.—­Only, as he further argued, once the absurdity of that same demand admitted, were you not free to talk of exaggeration, or of the “grand manner,” as you chose?  Were not the terms interchangeable, if you kept an open mind?  His personal acquaintance with the “grand manner” in respect of the affections, with heroical love, amounted, save in literature, to practically nothing; yet instinctively he applied those high sounding phrases to the attachment existing between Damaris and her father.  Both as discovery and, in some sort, as challenge to his own preconceived ideas and methods this gave him food for serious thought.

He made no attempt at comment or answer; but sat silent beside the girl, bare-headed in the soft wind and sunlight, between the flowing river and tranquil sea.