“Yes, you are to see it.  You might at any time have seen it.”

“Yes, read it to me.”

“When our good Bishop sent Mark Rivers here to us, he wrote me this letter—­”

“Well, go on.”

“MY DEAR SIR:  I send you the one of my young clergy with whom I am the most reluctant to part.  You will soon learn why, and learning will be thankful.  But to make clear to you why I urge him—­in fact, order him to go—­requires a word of explanation.  He is now only twenty-six years of age but looks older.  He married young and not wisely a woman who lived a childlike dissatisfied life, and died after two years.  One of his brothers died an epileptic; the other, a promising lawyer, became insane and killed himself.  This so affected their widowed mother that she fell into a speechless melancholy and has ever since been in the care of nurses in a farmer’s family—­a hopeless case.  I became of late alarmed at his increasing depression and evident failure in bodily strength.  He was advised to take a small country parish, and so I send him to you and my friend, Mrs. Penhallow, sure that he will give as much as he gets.  I need not say more.  He is well worth saving—­one of God’s best—­with too exacting a conscience—­learned, eloquent and earnest, and to end, a gentleman.”

“There is a lot more about Indian missions, which I think are hopeless, but I sent him a cheque, of course.”

“I supposed, James, that his depression was owing to his want of vigorous health.  Now I see, but how very sorrowful it is!  What else is there?  I did not mean to listen, but something was said about his mother.”

“Yes.  He has spent with her a large part of every August—­he called it his holiday.  My God, Ann!  Poor fellow!  This August she died.  It must be a relief.”

“Perhaps.”

“Oh, surely.  This is all, Ann.”

“I wish you had been less discreet long ago, James.  I think that the Bishop knowing how sensitive, how very reticent Mark is, meant only that he should not learn what was confided to you.”

“I never thought of that, Ann.  You may be right.”

She made no further comment, except to say, “But to know clears the air and leaves me free to talk to him at need.”  Penhallow felt that where he himself might be a useless confessor, his wife was surely to be trusted.

“If, Ann, the man could only be got on to the back of a horse—­” She won the desirable relief of laughter, and the eyes that were full of the tears of pity for this disastrous life overflowed of a sudden with mirth at the Squire’s one remedy for the troubles of this earthly existence.

“Oh, I am in earnest,” he said.  “Now I must write to John.”

When after a week or more she did talk to Mark Rivers, he was the better for it and felt free to speak to her as a younger man may to an older woman and can rarely do to the closest of male friends, for, after all, most friendships have their personal limitations and the man who has not both men and women friends may at some time miss what the double intimacies alone can give.