with one of the daughters, that the father, a cunning old Greek merchant, had compelled him to marry her.  Threats of exposure, and all the rest!  The brother officer hinted at a plot—­that the poor fellow had been trapped, and was more sinned against than sinning.  However, there it was.  He was married to the Greek girl; Miss Bremerton’s letters were returned; and the thing was at an end.  Our friend says she behaved splendidly.  She went on with her work in the War Trade Department—­shirked nothing and no one—­till suddenly, about six months ago, she had a bad breakdown—­’

‘What do you mean?’ said the Squire abruptly.  ‘She was ill?’

’A combination of overwork and influenza, I should think; but no doubt the tragedy had a good deal to do with it.  She went down to stay for a couple of months with an uncle in Dorsetshire, and got better.  Then the family lost some money, through a solicitor’s mismanagement—­enough anyway to make a great deal of difference.  The mother too broke down in health.  Miss Bremerton came home at once, and took everything on her own shoulders.  You remember, she heard of your secretaryship from that Balliol man you wrote to—­who had been a tutor of hers when she was at Somerville?  She determined to apply for it.  It was more money than she was getting in London, and she had to provide for her mother and to educate her young sister.  Plucky woman!  All this interested me very much, I confess.  I have formed such a high opinion of her!  And I thought it would interest you.’

‘I don’t know what we any of us have to do with it,’ grumbled the Squire.

The Rector drew himself up a little, resenting the implied rebuke.

’I hope I don’t seem to you to be carrying gossip for gossip’s sake,’ he said, rather indignantly.  ’Nothing was further from my intention.  I like and admire Miss Bremerton a great deal too much.’

‘Well, I don’t know what we can do,’ said the Squire testily.  ’We can’t unmarry the man.’

The Rector pulled up short, and offered a chilly good-bye.  As he hurried on towards the village—­little knowing the obstacles he would encounter in his path—­he said to himself that the Squire’s manners were really past endurance.  One could hardly imagine that Miss Bremerton would be long able to put up with them.

* * * * *

The Squire meanwhile pursued the rest of his way, wrapped in rather disagreeable reflections.  He was not at all grateful to the Rector for telling him the story—­quite the reverse.  It altered his mental attitude towards his secretary; introduced disturbing ideas, which he had no use for.  He had taken for granted that she was one of those single women of the present day whose intellectual interests are enough for them, who have never really felt the call of passion, and can be trusted to look at life sensibly without taking love and marriage into account.  To think of Miss Bremerton as having suffered severely from a love-affair—­broken her heart, and injured her health over it—­was most distracting.  If it had happened once—­why, of course, it might happen again.  She was not immune; in spite of all her gifts, she was susceptible, and it was a horrid nuisance.