Since Arthur had come down into
the country, he had been there once or twice: but the sight of the
sacred stone had brought no consolation to him. A guilty man doing a
guilty deed: a mere speculator, content to lay down his faith and
honor for a fortune and a worldly career; and owning that his life was
but a contemptible surrender--what right had he in the holy place?
what booted it to him in the world he lived in, that others were no
better than himself? Arthur and Laura rode by the gates of Fairoaks;
and he shook hands with his tenant's children, playing on the lawn and
the terrace--Laura looked steadily at the cottage wall, at the creeper
on the porch and the magnolia growing up to her window. "Mr. Pendennis
rode by to-day," one of the boys told his mother, "with a lady, and he
stopped and talked to us, and he asked for a bit of honeysuckle off
the porch, and gave it the lady. I couldn't see if she was pretty; she
had her veil down. She was riding one of Cramp's horses, out of
Baymouth.
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