The quiet humdrum of his own fireside would come upon him soon enough! "I think I shall leave you on Wednesday, sir," Crosbie said to the squire at breakfast on Sunday morning.
"Leave us on Wednesday!" said the squire, who had an old-fashioned idea that people who were engaged to marry each other should remain together as long as circumstances could be made to admit of their doing so.

"Nothing wrong, is there ?" "Oh, dear, no! But everything must come to an end some day; and as I must make one or two short visits before I get back to town, I might as well go on Wednesday.

Indeed, I have made it as late as I possibly could." "Where do you go from here ?" asked Bernard.
"Well, as it happens, only into the next county,--to Courcy Castle." And then there was nothing more said about the matter at that breakfast-table.
It had become their habit to meet together on the Sunday mornings before church, on the lawn belonging to the Small House, and on this day the three gentlemen walked down together, and found Lily and Bell already waiting for them.

They generally had some few minutes to spare on those occasions before Mrs Dale summoned them to pass through the house to church, and such was the case at present.

The squire at these times would stand in the middle of the grass-plot, surveying his grounds, and taking stock of the shrubs, and flowers, and fruit-trees round him; for he never forgot that it was all his own, and would thus use this opportunity, as he seldom came down to see the spot on other days.