“Holmby is not my house,” said Mr. Meredith as they drove up the avenue; “I took it to please Alice. She has a fancy for the north now, as she used to have for the south.” As he said this he gave a wistful side-glance at Colin, who had scarcely spoken during all the drive; and even to this speech the young man made little response. The house was a pale grey house, of rough limestone², like the humbler houses, surrounded by woods, and bearing anything but a cheerful aspect. The avenue was long and straight, and the cold commonplace outline of this secluded³ dwelling-place filled up the vista⁴ between the two dark lines of trees, growing gradually more distinct as they approached. Everything had a certain visionary aspect to Colin at the moment, and the look of the house irritated him, as if it had been a type of the commonplace existence which he was henceforward to lead. He could not keep the cloud that was on his mind from appearing also on his countenance⁵, though, at the same time, he could not help observing that Mr. Meredith looked at him often with a regard that was almost pathetic.{401} To be sure, there was nothing very elevated in the aspect of this man, whose history was not one which Colin liked to think of; but still it was evident that his heart was trembling for his child, and that he was conveying to her the lover whom he had once rejected and insulted, as he might have carried a costly⁶ medicine, hard to procure⁷ and of doubtful efficacy, but still the only thing that there was any hope in. Colin recognised this wistful look by the freemasonry of a mind equally excited, though in a different way; and, as for Lauderdale, he looked on at both with a painful doubt and uncertainty⁸ which had never before entered into his thoughts. For all this time he had been trying to think it was Alice’s father, or even Alice herself, who was to blame; and now only he began to see clearly the

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