with Veronica's. It makes Maud uneasy.
I always knew Veronica to be a flirt; but,
upon my word, I think her conduct with
this man passes all limits. What is the
vicar about? He knows nothing whatever
of this man with whom he lets his daughter
wander about the country."

"Gently, Nelly! They were not
wandering about the country. They were
taking an afternoon stroll within sight of
her father's house."

"It's all the same!"

"Not quite, my dear."

"Tom, would you like your daughter to
do so?"

"My dear Nelly, if you are speaking
seriously——"

"Quite seriously."

"Then, seriously, I think you are making
a mountain of a molehill. The man is not
a pleasant-looking fellow, though I suppose
he is handsome after a fashion. Neither
was he particularly civil in his manner. I
dare say he thinks himself a very
magnificent three-tailed bashaw. But, after all,
neither his looks nor his manners constitute
a crime. And if the vicar and his daughter
are satisfied, I don't think we have any
business to object."

"Why should Sir John Gale linger at
Shipley? He is quite well enough to travel.
Maud was saying——"

"Oh, it is Maud who has been putting
this into your head?"

"No. But she distrusts and dislikes the
man. I am not fond of Veronica Levincourt,
but I cannot help feeling that I
ought to hold out a hand of womanly help
to her—ought to give her a word of counsel.
The girl is motherless, and in spite of all
her self-confidence, we must remember that
she is but nineteen. I wish I had invited
her here with Maud! But, to say the truth,
I was afraid of Hugh Lockwood getting
entangled by her. He was greatly taken
with her beauty. And her love of admiration
would lead her to encourage him
without the smallest compunction."

"Well, my dear child," said the captain,
"this Sir John Gale will be gone in a few
days and——"

"Is he going?"

"Yes, to be sure! Oh I forgot to tell
you. His man—a little foreign fellow,
who opened the door to us at the vicarage
—said that his master would be leaving
Shipley at the end of the week."

"Oh how relieved and glad I am! You
stupid boy, not to tell me that, the very
first thing!"

"So you see, you need not attempt the
very disagreeable duty of giving a word of
counsel to Miss Levincourt."

"Disagreeable enough! And ten to one
I should have done no good by it. Well,
Sir John is going, and it is all smooth.
Maud will be delighted to get rid of him."

"I cannot understand why you two
should take such a hatred to the man,
though! As for you, Mrs. Nelly, you
know simply nothing whatever about him.
He may be a model of manly virtue for
anything you can tell."

"I hardly think that a boon companion
of Lord George Segrave's is likely to be
that! But I am willing to allow him every
virtue under the sun if he will only relieve
Shipley vicarage of his presence."

"There's the dinner-bell. Come along,
you illogical, prejudiced, unreasonable—
dear little woman!"

CHAPTER XII. THE VICAR IS NOT ALARMED.

RAIN, rain, rain! It poured down on
the open roads. It plashed and dripped
from gutter and gargoyle. It sank deep
into the miry uplands, and covered the
marsh-rushes on the wide flats with beaded
pearls.

The sun went down amid clouds that
looked like dun smoke reddened by the
reflex of a distant conflagration.

Splash, splash, from the slated eaves
came the water-drops on to the evergreens
outside the sitting-room window at Shipley
vicarage. Splash, splash, splash!

The log hissed in the chimney. They
always crowned their coal fire with a log
of wood at the vicarage of an evening.
It was a custom which Stella Levincourt
had brought with her from foreign parts.
She said she liked the smell of the wood.

Not that the pungent, acrid odour was
grateful in her nostrils; not that the blue
flame leaped brighter than the deep glow
from the steady coal; no; not for these
reasons did the economical housewife (who
had learned to cherish a sixpence with the
lingering grip that had been wont to caress
her Tuscan paul) insist on the extravagance
of a log of wood upon the evening fire.

It was the memory of her youth that
she loved, and to which she offered this
burnt-sacrifice. Phantoms of old days
revisited her in the pale grey smoke that
curled up on her hearth-stone, like the
smoke of the Tuscan fires, far away.

And the custom survived her. It was
continued on the same ostensible ground
as that on which she had commenced it.