Mrs. Horniblow permitted herself a dash.

“At Stourmouth—­yes?” she ventured.  “That reminds me.  I hear—­how far the information is correct I cannot pretend to say—­that kind little person, Miss Bilson, has been there with Miss Verity this last week.  I observed we had not met her in the village just lately.  I hope you have good news of her.  When is she expected back?”

Without hesitation or agitation came the counter-stroke.

“I don’t know,” Damaris answered.  “Her plans, I believe, are uncertain at present.  You and Dr. Horniblow will stay to tea with us, won’t you?”—­this charmingly.  “It will be here in a very few minutes—­I can ring for it at once.”

And the lady laughed to herself, good-temperedly accepting the rebuff.  For it was neatly delivered, and she could admire clever fencing even though she herself were pinked.—­As to tea, she protested positive shame at prolonging her visit—­for didn’t it already amount rather to a “visitation?”—­yet retained her seat with every appearance of satisfaction.—­If the truth must be told, Mrs. Cooper’s cakes were renowned throughout society at Deadham, as of the richest, the most melting in the mouth; and James—­hence not improbably the tendency to abdominal protuberance—­possessed an inordinate fondness for cakes.  He had shown himself so docile in respect of projected inflammatory sermons, and of morning calls personally conducted by his wife, that the latter could not find it in her heart to ravish him away from these approaching very toothsome delights.  Nay—­let him stay and eat—­for was not such staying good policy, she further reflected, advertising the fact she bore no shadow of malice towards her youthful hostess for that neatly delivered rebuff.

After this sort, therefore, was gossip, for the time being at all events, scotched if not actually killed.  Parochial excitement flagged the sooner, no doubt, because, of the four persons chiefly responsible for its creation, two were invisible and the remaining two apparently quite unconscious of its ever having existed.—­Mrs. Lesbia Faircloth, at the Inn, the Vicar’s wife left out of the count.—­If Sir Charles Verity and Damaris had hurried away, gossip would have run after them with liveliest yelpings.  But this practise of masterly inactivity routed criticism.  How far was it studied, cynical on the part of the father, or innocent upon that of the daughter, she could not tell one bit; but that practically it carried success along with it, she saw to be indubitable.  “Face the music and the band stops playing”—­so she put it to herself, as she walked down the drive to the front gate, her James—­was he just a trifle crestfallen, good man?—­strolling, umbrella in hand, beside her.

All subsequent outbreaks of gossip may be described as merely sporadic.  They did not spread.  As when, for instance, peppery little Dr. Cripps—­still smarting under Dr. McCabe’s introduction into preserves he had reckoned exclusively his own—­advised himself to throw off a nasty word or so on the subject to Commander Battye and Captain Taylor, over strong waters and cigars in his surgery—­tea, the ladies, and the card-table left to their own devices in the drawing-room meanwhile—­one evening after a rubber of whist.