There was a little pause, and then Lady Atherley added—­

“Cecilia has never been the same since her baby died.  She used to have such a bright colour before that.  He was not quite two years old, but she felt it dreadfully; and it was a great pity, for if he had lived he would have come in for all the Stowell property.”

The door opened.

“Why, George; how late you are, and—­how wet!  Is it raining?”

“Yes; hard.”

“Have you bought the ponies?”

“No; they won’t do at all.  But whom do you think I picked up on the way home?  You will never guess.  Your pet parson, Mr. Austyn.”

“Mr. Austyn!”

“Yes; I found him by the roadside not far from Monk’s cottage, where he had been visiting, looking sadly at a spring-cart, which the owner thereof, one of the Rood Warren farmers, had managed to upset and damage considerably.  He was giving Austyn a lift home when the spill took place.  So, remembering your hankering and Lindy’s for the society of this young Ritualist, I persuaded him that instead of tramping six miles through the wet he should come here and put up for the night with us; so, leaving the farmer free to get home on his pony, I clinched the matter by promising to send him back to-morrow in time for his eight o’clock service.”

“Oh dear!  I wish I had known he was coming.  I would have ordered a dinner he would like.”

“Judging by his appearance, I should say the dinner he would like will be easily provided.”

Atherley was right.  Mr. Austyn’s dinner consisted of soup, bread, and water.  He would not even touch the fish or the eggs elaborately prepared for his especial benefit.  Yet he was far from being a skeleton at the feast, to whose immaterial side he contributed a good deal—­not taking the lead in conversation, but readily following whosoever did, giving his opinions on one topic after another in the manner of a man well informed, cultured, thoughtful, original even, and at the same time with no warmer interest in all he spoke of than the inhabitant of another planet might have shown.

Atherley was impressed and even surprised to a degree unflattering to the rural clergy.

“This is indeed a rara avis of a country curate,” he confided to me after dinner, while Lady Atherley was unravelling with Austyn his connection with various families of her acquaintance.  “We shall hear of him in time to come, if, in the meanwhile, he does not starve himself to death.  By the way, I lay you odds he sees the ghost.  To begin with; he has heard of it—­everybody has in this neighbourhood; and then St. Anthony himself was never in a more favourable condition for spiritual visitations.  Look at him; he is blue with asceticism.  But he won’t turn tail to the ghost; he’ll hold his own.  There’s metal in him.”

This led me to ask Austyn, as we went down the bachelor’s passage to our rooms, if he were afraid of ghosts.