“Rachel is a good woman, a saint.  Such a woman does not love in a hurry, but when she does she loves forever.”  What was that poem he and she had so often read together?  Tennyson, wasn’t it?  About love not altering “when it alteration finds,” but bears it out even to the crack of doom.  Fine poet, Tennyson; he knew the human heart.  She had certainly adored him four years ago, just in the devoted way in which he needed to be loved.  And how he had worshipped her!  Of course he had behaved badly.  He saw that now.  But if he had it was not from want of love.  She had been unable to see that at the time.  Good women were narrow, and they were hard, and they did not understand men.  Those were their faults.  Had she learned better by now?  Did she realize that she had far better marry a man who had loved her for herself, and who still loved her, rather than some fortune-hunter, like that weedy fellow Scarlett. (Mr. Tristram called all slender men weedy.) He would frankly own his fault and ask for forgiveness.  He glanced for a moment at the gentle, familiar face beside him.

“She will forgive me,” he said, reassuring himself, in spite of an inward qualm of misgiving.  “I am glad I arranged to stay on.  I will speak to her this afternoon.  She has become much softened, and we will bury the past and make a fresh start together.”

* * * * *

“I will walk up to Beaumere this afternoon,” said Doll, stretching a leg outside the open end of the pew.  “I wish Gresley would not call the Dissenters worms.  They are some of my best tenants, and they won’t like it when they hear of it.  And I’ll go round the young pheasants. (Doll did this, or something similar, every Sunday afternoon of his life, but he always rehearsed it comfortably in thought on Sunday mornings.) And if Withers is about I’ll go out in the boat—­the big one, the little one leaks—­and set a trimmer or two for to-morrow.  I’m not sure I’ll set one under the south bank, for there was the devil to pay last time, when that beast of an eel got among the roots.  I’ll ask Withers what he thinks.  I wish Gresley would not call the Dissenters blind leaders of the blind.  It’s such bad form, and I don’t suppose the text meant that to start with, and what’s the use of ill-feeling in a parish?  And I’ll take Scarlett with me.  We’ll slip off after luncheon, and leave that bounder to bound by himself.  And poor old Crack shall come too.  Uncle George always took him.”

* * * * *

“James is simply surpassing himself,” said Mrs. Gresley to herself, her arm round her little daughter.  “Worms what a splendid comparison!  The Churchman, the full-grown man after the stature of Christ, and the Dissenter invertebrate (I think dear James means inebriate), like a worm cleaving to the earth.  But possibly God in His mercy may let them slip in by a back-door to heaven!  How like him to say that, so generous, so wide-minded,