eye was filled with a vision of the green slopes of the wilderness
garden at Brook, and the beeches laving their shadows in the sweet
running water.

"I believe I am homesick," she said. "I cannot care for this place. I
should have had a better chance of taking to it kindly if my grandfather
had let me go home for a little while. Everything is an effort here."
And it is to be feared that she gave way again, and fretted in a manner
that Madame Fournier would have grieved to see. But there was no help
for it; her heart was sore, and tears relieved it.

* * * * *

Mr. Fairfax was at home to dinner. He returned from Norminster jaded and
out of spirits. Now, Bessie, though she did not love him (though she
felt it a duty to assert and reassert that fact to herself, lest she
should forget it), felt oddly pained when she looked into his face and
saw that he was dull; to be dull signified to be unhappy in Bessie's
vocabulary. But timidity tied her tongue. It was not until Jonquil had
left them to themselves that they attempted any conversation. Then Mr.
Fairfax remarked, "You have been making a tour of investigation,
Elizabeth: you have been into the village?"

Bessie said that she had, and that she had gone into the church. Then
all at once an impulse came upon her to ask, "Why did you let my parents
go so far away? was it so very wrong in them to marry?"

"No, not wrong at all. It is written, 'A man shall leave his father and
mother, and cleave unto his wife,'" was the baffling reply she got, and
it silenced her. And not for that occasion only.