the ranks of emancipated
women? With his experience of Marcella Moxey, he welcomed the possibility of
this variation of the type, but at the same time, in obedience to a new spirit
that had strange possession of him, recognised that such phenomena no longer
aroused his personal interest. By the oddest of intellectual processes he had
placed himself altogether outside the sphere of unorthodox spirits. Concerning
Miss Moorhouse he cared only for the report she might make of him to the
Warricombes.
    Before long, the carriage was stopped that he might enjoy one of the
pleasantest views in the neighbourhood of the city. A gate, interrupting a high
bank with which the road was bordered, gave admission to the head of a great
cultivated slope, which fell to the river Exe; hence was suddenly revealed a
wide panorama. Three well-marked valleys - those of the Creedy, the Exe, and the
Culm - spread their rural loveliness to remote points of the horizon; gentle
undulations, with pasture and woodland, with long winding roads, and many a farm
that gleamed white amid its orchard leafage, led the gaze into regions of
evanescent hue and outline. Westward, a bolder swell pointed to the skirts of
Dartmoor. No inappropriate detail disturbed the impression. Exeter was wholly
hidden behind the hill on which the observers stood, and the line of railway
leading thither could only be descried by special search. A foaming weir at the
hill's foot blended its soft murmur with that of the fir branches hereabouts;
else, no sound that the air could convey beyond the pulsing of a bird's note.
    All had alighted, and for a minute or two there was silence. When Peak had
received such geographical instruction as was needful, Warricombe pointed out to
him a mansion conspicuous on the opposite slope of the Exe valley, the seat of
Sir Stafford Northcote. The house had no architectural beauty, but its solitary
lordship amid green pastures and tracts of thick wood declared the graces and
privileges of ancestral wealth. Standing here alone, Godwin would have surveyed
these possessions of an English aristocrat with more or less bitterness; envy
would, for a moment at all events, have perturbed his pleasure in the natural
scene. Accompanied as he was, his emotion took a form which indeed was allied to
envy, but had nothing painful. He exulted in the prerogatives of birth and
opulence, felt proud of hereditary pride, gloried that his mind was capable of
appreciating to the full those distinctions which, by the vulgar, are not so
much as suspected. Admitted to equal converse with men and women who represented
the best in English society