But what business of ours, as you say?  Only, dear, you needn’t have said it quite so pointedly.  Of course I’ll call as soon as I can in decency; she may let me be of use to her.  Oh, bother Mrs. Venables!  If she doesn’t call, no doubt many others won’t; you must remember that he has never entertained as yet.  Oh, what a dance they could give!  And did you hear what she said about his age?  He is sixty-five, now!”

The vicar laughed.  It was his habit to let his young wife rattle on when they were alone, and even lay down the law for him to her heart’s content; but, though fifteen years her senior, and never a vivacious man himself, there was much in their life that he saw in the same light as she did, though never quite so soon.

“Sixty-five!” he suddenly repeated, with a fresh chuckle; “and last year, when Sybil was thought to be in the running—­poor Sybil, how well she took it!—­last year her mother told me she knew for a fact he was not a day more than five-and-forty!  Poor Steel, too!  He has done for them both in that quarter, I am afraid.  And now,” added Hugh, in his matter-of-fact way, as though they had been discussing theology all this time, “I must go back to my sermon if I am to get it done to-night.”

CHAPTER X

A SLIGHT DISCREPANCY

Mrs. Woodgate paid the promised call a few days later, walking briskly by herself along the woodland path that made it no distance from Marley Vicarage to Normanthorpe House, and cutting a very attractive figure among the shimmering lights and shadows of the trees.  She was rather tall, and very straight, with the pale brown skin and the dark brown eye, which, more especially when associated with hair as light as Morna Woodgate’s, go to make up one of the most charming and distinctive types of English womanhood.  Morna, moreover, took a healthy interest in her own appearance, and had not only the good taste to dress well, but the good sense not to dress too well.  Her new coat and skirt had just come home, and, fawn-colored like herself, they fitted and suited her to equal perfection.  Morna thought that she might even go to church in the coat and skirt, now and again during the summer, and she had a brown straw hat with fine feathers of the lighter shade which she made peculiarly her own; but this she had discarded as too grand for an informal call, for Hugh had been summoned to a sick-bed at the last moment, and might be detained too late to follow.  But the Steels had been back two days, and Morna could not wait another hour.