Arthur readily sold him Miss Brown, and every day she carried him to Barbara. But he took the advice of Wingfold and did not remain long away from home any day, but close by to his father’s call. He had many things for him to do, and rejoiced to find him both able and ready. He would even send him where a servant would have done as well, but Richard went with hearty goodwill. It gladdened him to be of service to the old man.

Then a rumour reached his father’s ears, carried to lady Ann by her elderly maid, that Richard had been seen in low company, and he was not long in suspecting the truth of the matter.

Not once since Richard’s return had sir Wilton given the Mansons a thought, never doubting that his son’s residence at Oxford must have cured him of a merely accidental inclination to such low company. But almost every day that Richard went to Wylder Hall, he had a few minutes with Alice at the parsonage. Barbara treated Alice as a sister, and so did Helen Wingfold. Their kindness, with her new peace of heart, and plenty of food and fresh air, had made her strong and almost beautiful.

It was Richard’s custom to ride over in the morning, but one day it was more convenient for him to go in the evening, and that same evening it happened that Arthur Manson had gone to see his sister. On the way back from the Hall, Richard found him at the parsonage and proposed to see him home. Miss Brown was a good walker, and if Arthur did not want to ride all the way, they would ride and walk alternately. Arthur was delighted.

They set out in the dusk on foot, and Alice went a short part of the way with them. Richard led Miss Brown and Alice clung joyously to his arm. The western sky was a smoky red, the stars were coming out, the wind was mild, and seemed to fill Alice’s soul with life from the fountain of life, from God himself.

For Alice had been learning from Barbara—not to think things, but to feel realities, the reality of real things—to see truths themselves. Often, when Mrs. Wingfold could spare her, Barbara would take her out for a walk. Then sometimes as they walked she would quite forget her presence, and through that very forgetting, Alice learned much.

When first she saw Barbara lost in silent joy, and could see nothing to make her look glad, she wondered a moment, then swiftly concluded she must be thinking of God. When she saw her spread out her arms as if to embrace the wind that flowed to meet them, then too she wondered, but presently began to feel what a thing the wind was—how full of something strange and sweet. She began to learn that nothing is dead, that there cannot be a physical abstraction, that nothing exists for the sake of its physical laws. She did not put it so to herself, I need hardly say, but she was, in a word, learning to feel that the world was alive.