"Lady Ogram thinks a great deal of her, and, I fancy, means to leave her money." "Gracious! You don't say so!" Mrs.Lashmar put the subject disdainfully aside, and Dyce was glad to speak of something else.
Throughout the day, the vicar was too busy to hold conversation with his son.

But after dinner they sat alone together in the study, Mrs.
Lashmar being called forth by some parochial duty.

As he puffed at his newly-lighted pipe, Dyce reflected on all that had happened since he last sat here, some three months ago, and thought of what might have been his lot had not fortune dealt so kindly with him.

Glancing at his father's face, he noted in it the signs of wearing anxiety; it seemed to him that the vicar looked much older than in the spring, and he was impressed by the pathos of age, which has no hopes to nourish, which can ask no more of life than a quiet ending.

He could not imagine himself grey-headed, disillusioned; the effort to do so gave him a thrill of horror.