The parish, neglecting its accustomed industries and occupations, mustered in strength; incited thereto, not only by the draw of recently resurrected scandal, but by news of the appointment recently offered Sir Charles Verity, which had somehow got noised abroad.  The irony of his illness and death occurring precisely when he was invited to mount nothing less—­according to local report—­than an oriental throne, sufficed to stir the most lethargic imagination.  Moralists of the Reginald Sawyer school might read in this the direct judgment of an offended deity.  Deadham, however, being reprehensibly clannish, viewed the incident otherwise; and questioned—­thanks to an ingeniously inverted system of reasoning—­whether the said Reginald Sawyer hadn’t laid himself open to a charge of manslaughter or of an even graver breach of the Decalogue.

Theresa Bilson—­in whose hat artificial buttercups and daisies hastily made room for bows of crape—­lurked in the humble obscurity of the free seats near the west door.  To right and left she was flanked by a guardian Miss Minett; but these ladies to-day were but broken reeds on which to lean.  They still laboured under a sense of having been compromised, and of resultant social ostracism.  This, although their former parsonic lodger had vanished from the scene on the day following his threatened immersion—­a half-hearted proposition on his part of “facing out the undeserved obloquy, living down the coarse persecution” meeting with as scant encouragement from his ecclesiastical superior, the vicar, as from themselves.  Theresa—­it really was hard on her—­shared their eclipse.  Hence the humble obscurity of the free seats, where she sniffed, dabbed her eyes and gurgled, unheeded and unseen.

Finally young Tom Verity—­home on his first long leave—­having accompanied the family party from Canton Magna and feeling his sense of humour unequal to the continued strain of their sublime insularity, benevolently herded two stately, though shivering, turbanned native gentlemen, who reached Deadham during the early stages of the ceremony no one quite knew whence or when.  In the intervals of his self-imposed duties, he found time to admire the rich unction of his father, the Archdeacon’s manner and voice.

“Plus ca change, plus la meme chose,” he quoted gleefully.  “What a consummate fraud the dear old governor is; and how deliciously innocent of the fact, that he imposes upon no one half so successfully as he does upon himself!”

Our young man also found time, from afar, to admire Damaris; but, let it be added, to a very different tune.  Her beauty came as surprise to him as having much more than fulfilled its early promise.  He found it impressive beyond that of any one of the many ladies, mature or callow, with whom it was his habit largely to flirt.  So far he could congratulate himself on having successfully withstood the wiles of matrimony—­but by how near a shave, at