“I can’t see,” said Mary reading Robina’s letter, “what Mr. Grierson’s good looks have got to do with it.”

Rowcliffe’s face darkened.  He thought he could see.

* * * * *

But Mr. Grierson did not wake Garthdale up.  It opened one astonished eye on his practices and turned over in its sleep again.  Mr. Grierson was young, and the village regarded all he did as the folly of his youth.  It saw no harm in Mr. Grierson; not even when he conceived a Platonic passion for Mrs. Steven Rowcliffe, and spent all his spare time in her drawing-room and on his way to and from it.

The curate lodged in the village at the Blenkirons’ over Rowcliffe’s surgery, and from that vantage ground he lay in wait for Rowcliffe.  He watched his movements.  He was ready at any moment to fling open his door and spring upon Rowcliffe with ardor and enthusiasm.  It was as if he wanted to prove to him how heartily he forgave him for being Mrs. Rowcliffe’s husband.  There was a robust innocence about him that ignored the doctor’s irony.

Mary had her own use for Mr. Grierson.  His handsome figure, assiduous but restrained, the perfect image of integrity in adoration, was the very thing she wanted for her drawing-room.  She knew that its presence there had the effect of heightening her own sensual attraction.  It served as a reminder to Rowcliffe that his wife was a woman of charm, a fact which for some time he appeared to have forgotten.  She could play off her adorer against her husband, while the candid purity of young Grierson’s homage renewed her exquisite sense of her own goodness.

And then the Curate really was a cousin of Lord Northfleet’s and Mrs. Rowcliffe had calculated that to have him in her pocket would increase prodigiously her social value.  And it did.  And Mrs. Rowcliffe’s social value, when observed by Grierson, increased his adoration.

And when Rowcliffe told her that young Grierson’s Platonic friendship wasn’t good for him, she made wide eyes at him and said, “Poor boy!  He must have some amusement.”

She didn’t suppose the curate could be much amused by calling at the Vicarage.  Young Grierson had confided to her that he couldn’t “make her sister out.”

“I never knew anybody who could,” she said, and gave him a subtle look that disturbed him horribly.

“I only meant—­” He stammered and stopped, for he wasn’t quite sure what he did mean.  His fair, fresh face was strained with the effort to express himself.

He meditated.

“You know, she’s really rather fascinating.  You can’t help looking at her.  Only—­she doesn’t seem to see that you’re there.  I suppose that’s what puts you off.”

“I know.  It does, dreadfully,” said Mary.

She summoned a flash and let him have it.  “But she’s magnificent.”

“Magnificent!” he echoed with his robust enthusiasm.

But what he thought was that it was magnificent of Mrs. Rowcliffe to praise her sister.