gentle ministering to good and to sinful, his sipping of good wine, his reading of books, his games and his writing, and his care of Lucilla.

He could not remember his father; for the father had “gone down with his ship” when Philip had been but a baby; and Lucilla could remember neither her mother nor brother; for they had died when she was not three.

Helen Reynolds was still remembered in the parish for her pretty face, and her soft kind ways—remembered as “a nice little thing” with the best heart in the world, but no special strength of mind or of will.

But that had not been so. Few women have ever had a stronger will, and even fewer a more capable mind. Her intense gentleness had been a dignity, not weakness. An entirely happy life had left her will unruffled, and her really fine mind had been homekeeping, a trifle proud, and more than a trifle scornful of the mental equipments—outside of the vicarage itself—about her. A great many rich and leisured people—quite a few of them with minor titles—had smart country establishments in the purlieus of her husband’s parish, but they were not intellectuals, they read more novels than quarterlies, attended more race-meetings than academic lectures, were more steeped in fashions than in philosophies, and the village folk were true to type, self-seeking, self-absorbed, gossipy, curious, ordinary. They read the Surrey Comet—some of them sometimes—abused the weather, asked alms directly or indirectly, but industriously, of Vicar and Squire, and took a keen rather than gracious interest in each other’s births and marriages, ups and downs, debts and earnings, shortcomings and Sunday dinners. They had not interested Helen Reynolds; which was not altogether to their disadvantage. For the Vicar’s wife had a shrewder gift of analysis than the Vicar had. He saw chiefly the good in every one. She saw the bad, as quickly and surely as she did the good; and her sense of justice leaned to severity rather than to mercy. She had been as devoted to Philip as he to her. But he had deserved it. A faulty husband would have had short shrift with Helen Reynolds, whose “sweetly pretty” face and soft, rippling, girlish hair enhoused a relentless judgment, an exigeant taste and unwavering determination. But she had a sweet, sunny spirit and a quick, bubbling sense of humor. She rarely smiled, but she laughed fairly often. And her wit was both pretty and trenchant.

The Vicar never made a joke in his life, and never failed to see one—and, if it really was good, never failed to enjoy it greatly.

There was more lion, more indomitability, in wife than in husband, but they were excellently matched in tastes, culture and breeding; and their comradeship had been “perfect and entire, wanting nothing.” And death did not separate them.

The daughter of such parents and of such a marriage came into life with fine equipment. She had her mother’s mind, the good taste of the two, a person less “pretty,” more distinguished than her mother’s. She had her mother’s cool, clear head, her father’s big, loyal heart, her mother’s sharp eyes, her father’s fine, firm hand on bridle or reins. She had his genial liking of people, his love of fun, her mother’s resentment of all that offended her taste, the tireless limbs of them both, the flair of adventure and travel that they had shared almost equally. She was fearless and exquisitely bred.

Philip Reynolds had traveled much in his younger days, and he still roamed the world—in his study and in the easy chair by the drawing-room fire. But since his wife’s death he had not spent a night out of the sleeping-room that had also been hers. He still loved to travel—with the book on his knee; but not for all the wonder-spots of earth would he have foregone even once his daily tryst at the graves in the churchyard.

Lucilla Reynolds always had longed to travel, but had done it but little. For her own sake her father had been unwilling to spare her—for they had few relatives, and none to whom he cared to entrust his girl often. But he was relinquishing her now. And she was going to travel far. For Captain Crespin’s regiment was stationed in India. And they were to be married to-morrow, Antony Crespin and Lucilla Reynolds.

CHAPTER II

The Vicar was suffering acutely. He knew he’d miss his daughter. And he thought he should not see her again after to-morrow’s parting. So he went into the breakfast-room, where he knew she’d be waiting for him as she always was, wearing his brightest face. No shadow of his making should dim the child’s last day at home with her father. There would be time enough—all the rest of his life—to miss her in, and he did not intend to do it to-day, in the least, or to anticipate it. This should be a day of great and unbroken joy. And he didn’t intend to mope after she’d gone. Not he! He had the churchyard, his people to shepherd, the flowers in his garden, and good-fellow books on his shelves, and his one great Friendship. And he was brave.

It was hard to let the child go—that of course—but the way of her going contented him well. From the hour of her birth he had prayed that Lucilla might marry. The new dispensation that made life so much more interesting and varied for unmarried women had his cordial endorsement, because it did, as he judged, make the world a pleasanter place for an unmarried woman; but he was profoundly and acutely sure that marriage was for every woman “the better part,” and in the increasing preponderance of women to-day, making marriage a mathematical impossibility for so awkwardly many, his prayer that his girl should marry took on an unplacid quality of anxiety, almost a certain feverishness that he owned to himself was less than becoming to so spiritual an act as prayer.

He was glad when love found Lucilla out, and marriage beckoned and claimed her. He liked and approved Antony Crespin. And he rejoiced that her marriage was to take so far afield the daughter whose actual presence he could so ill spare, and would, he knew, so sorely miss. He knew that she—for all her sweet and unaffected happiness in it—had begun to find the quiet, beaten Surrey path a trifle tame, a little same and narrow. Because she was going so far, he thought that he should not see her again; but he was glad that she was. India would fascinate her, he thought; and the army life would amuse her. And of her happiness and welfare he had no doubt; for Crespin was good all through, a sterling, capable fellow, and Lucilla herself was as sane and sensible as she was true and sweet. Antony had beyond his Captain’s beggarly pay, though a bit less beggarly in an Indian regiment, of course, a decent private income; not too much, but just enough. The prayer of Agar would be answered for the husband and wife, and Philip Reynolds was sure that “Grant me neither poverty nor riches” was one of the most sensible petitions ever lifted up to God by man. Yes—it was a good match in every sense. And, if to-morrow would be one of his sharp sorrow-days, it too would be one of his gladdest.

Lucilla stood quietly radiant waiting for him at the breakfast table.

“Well, Daddy?” she said.

“Well, dear?”

“Sleep well?”

“Capitally! Capitally!”

It was their usual morning greeting. Then he kissed her, and she kissed him, as kindly and gently as he had in that same room, on that same spot every morning for years—but no more warmly, no more lingeringly than they always had; with no added significance. Each had resolved that to-day should be just like other days of theirs, to be cherished in memory all the more tenderly because it had been just one of their days of ordinary intimacy.