The next morning was Sunday, and he had planned to go by the Plymouth train to a station whence he could reach Start Point; but his mood was become so unsettled that ten o’clock, when already he should have been on his journey, found him straying about the Cathedral Close.  A mere half-purpose, a vague wavering intention, which might at any moment be scattered by common sense, drew his steps to the door of the Cathedral, where people were entering for morning service; he moved idly within sight of the carriages which drew up.  Several had discharged their freightage of tailoring and millinery, when two vehicles, which seemed companions, stopped at the edge of the pavement, and from the second alighted the young ladies whom Godwin had yesterday observed; their male companion, however, was different.  The carriage in advance also contained four persons:  a gentleman of sixty, his wife, a young girl, and the youth of yesterday.  It needed but a glance to inform Godwin that the oldest of the party was Mr. Warricombe, Buckland’s father; ten years had made no change in his aspect.  Mrs. Warricombe was not less recognisable.  They passed at once into the edifice, and he had scarcely time to bestow a keen look upon Sidwell.

That was a beautiful girl; he stood musing upon the picture registered by his brain.  But why not follow, and from a neighbouring seat survey her and the others at his leisure?  Pooh!  But the impulse constrained him.  After all, he could not get a place that allowed him to see Sidwell.  Her companion, however, the one who seemed to be of much the same age, was well in view.  Sisters they could not be; nothing of the Warricombe countenance revealed itself in those handsome but strongly-marked features.  A beautiful girl, she also, yet of a type that made slight appeal to him.  Sidwell was all he could imagine of sweet and dignified; more modest in bearing, more gracile, more—­

Monday at noon, and he still walked the streets of Exeter.  Early this morning he had been out to the Old Tiverton Road, and there, on the lawn amid the laurels, had caught brief glimpse of two female figures, in one of which he merely divined Sidwell.  Why he tarried thus he did not pretend to explain to himself.  Rain had just come on, and the lowering sky made him low-spirited; he mooned about the street under his umbrella.

And at this rate, might vapour away his holiday.  Exeter was tedious, but he could not make up his mind to set forth for the sea-shore, where only his own thoughts awaited him.  Packed away in his wallet lay geological hammer, azimuth compass, clinometer, miniature microscope,—­why should he drag all that lumber about with him?  What to him were the bygone millions of ages, the hoary records of unimaginable time?  One touch of a girl’s hand, one syllable of musical speech,—­was it not that whereof his life had truly need?

As remote from him, however, as the age of the pterodactyl.  How often was it necessary to repeat this?  On a long voyage, such as he had all but resolved to take, one might perchance form acquaintances.  He had heard of such things; not impossibly, a social circle might open to him at Buenos Ayres.  But here in England his poor origin, his lack of means would for ever bar him from the intimacy of people like the Warricombes.