He sighed. He would not admit to himself that it was Maryllia Vancourt--'Maryllia Van'--or rather her guests who had exercised a maleficent influence on his little cure of souls, and that because the 'quality' did not go to church on Sundays, then some of the villagers,--like serfs under the sway of nobles,--stayed away also. He realised that he had given offence to this same 'quality,' by pausing in his reading, when they entered late on the one occasion they did attend divine service,--but he did not care at all for that. He knew, that the truth of the mischief wrought by the idle, unthinking upper classes of society, is always precisely what the upper classes do not want to hear;--and he was perfectly aware in his own mind that his short, but explicit sermon, on the 'Soul,' had not been welcome to any one of his aristocratic hearers, while it had been a little over the heads of his own parishioners.

"Mere waste of words!" he mused, with a kind of self-reproach--"I don't know why I chose the text or subject at all. Yes--yes!--I do know! Why do I play the deceiver with myself! She was there--so winsome--so pretty!--and her soul is sweet and pure;--it must be sweet and pure, if it can look out of such clear windows as her eyes. Let all the world go, but keep that soul, I thought!--and so I spoke as I did. But I think she scarcely listened--it was all waste of time, waste of words,--waste of breath! I shall be glad to see dear old Brent again. He wants to talk to me, he says--and I most certainly want to talk to him. After the dinner-party at the Manor, I shall be free. How I dread that party! How I wish I were not going! But I have promised her--and I must not break my word!"

He began to think about one or two matters that to him were not altogether pleasing. Chief among these was the fact that Sir Morton Pippitt had driven over twice now 'to inspect the church'-- accompanied by Lord Roxmouth, and the Reverend 'Putty' Leveson. Once Lord Roxmouth had left his card at the rectory, and had written on it: 'Wishing to have the pleasure of meeting Mr. Walden'--a pleasure which had not, so far, been gratified. Walden understood that Lord Roxmouth was, or intended to be, the future husband of Miss Vancourt. He had learned something of it from Bishop Brent's letter- -but now that his lordship was staying as a guest at Badsworth Hall, rumour had spread the statement so very generally that it was an almost accepted fact. Three days had been sufficient to set the village and county talking;--Roxmouth and his tools never did their mischievous work by halves. John Walden accepted the report as others accepted it--only reserving to himself an occasion to ask Miss Vancourt if it were indeed true. Meantime, he kept himself apart from the visitors--he had no wish to meet Lord Roxmouth-- though he knew that a meeting was inevitable at the forthcoming dinner-party at Abbot's Manor. Bainton had that dinner-party on his mind as well as his master. He had heard enough of it on all sides. Mrs. Spruce had gabbled of it, saying that 'what with jellies an' ices an' all the things as has to be thought of an' got in ready,' she was 'fair mazed an' moithered.' And she held forth on the subject to one of her favourite cronies, Mrs. Keeley, whose son Bob was still in a state of silent and resentful aggressiveness against the 'quality' for the death of his pet dog.




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