“One, I regret to say, ma’am, he never ought to have preached.”

“Poor young man!” she laughed it off.  “You’re a terribly severe critic, I’m afraid, Patch.  Probably he was nervous.”

“And reason enough.  You might think Satan himself stood at his elbow, the wicked things he said.”

This statement, coming from the mild and cow-like Mrs. Cooper, caused Felicia Verity the liveliest surprise.  She glanced enquiringly from one to the other of the little group, reading constraint and hardly repressed excitement in the countenance of each.  Their aspect and behaviour struck her, in fact, as singular to the point of alarm.

“Mary,” she asked, a trifle breathlessly, “has anything happened?  Where is Miss Damaris?”

“Hadn’t she got back to The Hard, ma’am, before you came out?”

“No—­why should she?  You and the other servants always reach home first.”

“Miss Damaris went out before the rest,” Mrs. Cooper broke forth in dolorous widowed accents.  “And no wonder, pore dear young lady, was it, Mr. Patch?  My heart bled for her, ma’am, that it did.”

Miss Felicia, gentle and eager, so pathetically resembling yet not resembling her famous brother, grew autocratic, stern as him almost, for once.

“And you allowed Miss Damaris to leave church alone—­she felt unwell, I suppose—­none of you accompanied her?  I don’t understand it at all,” she said.

“Young Captain Faircloth went out with Miss Damaris.  She wished it, ma’am,” Mary declared, heated and resentful at the unmerited rebuke.  “She as good as called to him to come and take her out of church.  It wasn’t for us to interfere, so we held back.”

“Captain Faircloth?  But this becomes more and more extraordinary!  Who is Captain Faircloth?”

“Ah! there you touch it, you must excuse my saying, ma’am.”  Mrs. Cooper gasped.

But at this juncture, Patch, rising to the height of masculine responsibility, flung himself gallantly—­and how unwillingly—­into the breach.  He was wounded in his respect and respectability alike, wounded for the honour of the family whom he had so long and faithfully served.  He was fairly cut to the quick—­while these three females merely darkened judgment by talking all at cross purposes and all at once.  Never had the solid, honest coachman found himself in a tighter or, for that matter, in anything like so tight a place.  But, looking in the direction of the village, black of clothing, heavy of walk and figure, he espied, as he trusted, approaching help.

“If you please, ma’am,” he said, touching his black bowler as he spoke, “I see Canon Horniblow coming along the road.  I think it would be more suitable for him to give you an account of what has passed.  He’ll know how to put it with—­with the least unpleasantness to all parties.  It isn’t our place—­Mrs. Cooper’s, Mary’s, or mine—­if you’ll pardon my making so free with my opinion, to mention any more of what’s took place.”