She could never forget that night of her misery when—­good man that he was!—­he had brought her the message of his faith.

But the great melting moments of life are rare, and the tracts between are full of small frictions.  What an incredible sermon he had preached on the preceding Sunday!  That any minister of the national church—­representing all sorts and conditions of men—­should think it right to bring his party politics into the pulpit in that way!  Unseemly! unpardonable!

Her dark eyes flashed—­and then clouded.  She had walked home from the sermon in a heat of wrath, had straightway sought out some blue ribbon, and made Tory rosettes for herself and her dog.  Muriel had laughed—­had been delighted to see her doing it.

But the rosettes were put away now—­thrown into the bottom of a drawer.  She would never wear them.

The Vicar, it seemed, was no friend of Oliver’s—­would not vote for him, and had been trying to induce the miners at Hartingfield to run a Labor man.  On the other hand, she understood that the Ferrier party in the division were dissatisfied with him on quite other grounds:  that they reproached him with a leaning to violent and extreme views, and with a far too lukewarm support of the leader of the party and the leader’s policy.  The local papers were full of grumbling letters to that effect.

Her brow knit over Oliver’s difficulties.  The day before, Mr. Lavery, meeting Muriel in the village street, had suggested that Miss Mallory might lend him the barn for a Socialist meeting—­a meeting, in fact, for the harassing and heckling of Oliver.

Had he come now to urge the same plea again?  A woman’s politics were not, of course, worth remembering!

She moved on to a point where, still hidden, she could see the lawn.  The Vicar was in full career; the harsh creaking voice came to her from the distance.  What an awkward unhandsome figure, with his long, lank countenance, his large ears and spectacled eyes!  Yet an apostle, she admitted, in his way—­a whole-hearted, single-minded gentleman.  But the barn he should not have.

She watched him depart, and then slowly emerged from her hiding-place.  Muriel, putting loving hands on her shoulders, looked at her with eyes that mocked a little—­tenderly.

“Yes, I know,” said Diana—­“I know.  I shirked.  Did he want the barn?”

“Oh no.  I convinced him, the other day, you were past praying for.”

“Was he shocked?  ’It is a serious thing for women to throw themselves across the path of progress,’” said Diana, in a queer voice.

Muriel looked at her, puzzled.  Diana reddened, and kissed her.

“What did he want, then?”

“He came to ask whether you would take the visiting of Fetter Lane—­and a class in Sunday-school.”

Diana gasped.

“What did you say?”

“Never mind.  He went away quelled.”

“No doubt he thought I ought to be glad to be set to work.”