“What have we here?” he said in a cold and strident voice.  “The man Simeon Stagg?  Is he here too?”

The moment before Rotha had gone into the dairy adjoining, and, coming back, she was handing a bowl of milk to her father.  Sim clutched at the dish with nervous fingers.

The Reverend Nicholas walked with measured paces towards where he sat.  Then he paused, and stood a yard or two behind Sim, whose eyes were still averted.

“I was told you had made your habitation on the hillside; a fitting home, no doubt, for one unfit to house with his fellows.”

Sim’s hand trembled violently, and he set the bowl of milk on the floor beside him.  Rotha was standing a yard or two apart, her breast heaving.

“Have you left it for good, pray?” There was the suspicion of a sneer in the tone with which the question was asked.

“Yes, he has left it for good,” said Rotha, catching her breath.

Sim had dropped his head on his hand, his elbow resting on his knee.

“More’s the shame, perhaps; who knows but it may have been the best place for shame to hide in!”

Sim got up, and turning about, with his eyes still fixed on the ground, he hurried out of the house.

“You’ve driven him away again—­do you know that?” said Rotha, regaining her voice, and looking fall into the vicar’s face, her eyes aflame.

“If so, I have done well, young woman.”  Then surveying her with a look of lofty condescension, he added, “And what is your business here?”

“To nurse Mrs. Ray; that is part of it.”

“Even so?  And were you asked to come?”

“Surely.”

“By whom?”

“Ralph, her son.”

“Small respect he could have had for you, young woman.”

“Tell me what you mean, sir,” said the girl, with a glance of mingled pride and defiance.

“Tell you what I mean, young woman!  Have you, then, no modesty?  Has that followed the shame of the hang-dog vagrant who has just left us?”

“Not another word about him!  If you have anything to say about me, say it, sir.”

“What!—­the father dead! the mother stricken into unconsciousness—­two sons—­and you a young woman—­was there no matron in the parish, that a young woman must come here?”

Rotha’s color, that had tinged her cheeks, mounted to her eyes and descended to her neck.  The prudery that was itself a sin had penetrated the armor of her innocence.  Without another word, she turned and left the kitchen.

“Well, Widow Ray,” she heard his reverence say, in an altered tone, as he faced the invalid.  She listened for no more.

Her trance was over now, and rude indeed had been the awakening.  Perhaps, after all, she had no business in this house—­perhaps the vicar was right.  Yet that could not be.  She thought of Mrs. Ray smitten down and dependent upon those about her for help in every simple office of life, and she thought of the promise she had made to Ralph.  “Promise me,” he had said, “that you will stay in the old home as long as mother lives.”  And she had promised; her pledged word was registered in heaven.