‘And the fourth?’

‘He is not in holy orders.’

’Am I to understand that all the three admirers about whom Miss Baddeley suffers remorse are clerics?’

‘Yes.  Julia has a wonderful attraction for the Church,’ said Miss Crofton, ’and that is what causes her difficulties.  She can’t write to them, or communicate to them in personal interviews (as you advised), that her heart is no longer—­’

‘Theirs,’ said Merton.  ’But why are the clergy more privileged than the laity?  I have heard of such things being broken to laymen.  Indeed it has occurred to many of us, and we yet live.’

‘I have urged the same facts on Julia myself,’ said Miss Crofton.  ’Indeed I know, by personal experience, that what you say of the laity is true.  They do not break their hearts when disappointed.  But Julia replies that for her to act as you and I would advise might be to shatter the young clergymen’s ideals.’

‘To shatter the ideals of three young men in holy orders!’ said Merton.

‘Yes, for Julia is their ideal—­Julia and Duty,’ said Miss Crofton, as if she were naming a firm.  ‘She lives only,’ here Julia twisted the hand of Miss Crofton, ’she lives only to do good.  Her fortune, entirely under her own control, enables her to do a great deal of good.’

Merton began to understand that the charms of Julia were not entirely confined to her beaux yeux.

’She is a true philanthropist.  Why, she rescued me from the snares and temptations of the stage,’ said Miss Crofton.

‘Oh, now I understand,’ said Merton; ’I knew that your face and voice were familiar to me.  Did you not act in a revival of The Country Wife?’

‘Hush,’ said Miss Crofton.

‘And Lady Teazle at an amateur performance in the Canterbury week?’

‘These are days of which I do not desire to be reminded,’ said Miss Crofton.  ’I was trying to explain to you that Julia lives to do good, and has a heart of gold.  No, my dear, Mr. Merton will much misconceive you unless you let me explain everything.’  This remark was in reply to the agitated gestures of Julia.  ’Thrown much among the younger clergy in the exercise of her benevolence, Julia naturally awakens in them emotions not wholly brotherly.  Her sympathetic nature carries her off her feet, and she sometimes says “Yes,” out of mere goodness of heart, when it would be wiser for her to say “No”; don’t you, Julia?’

Merton was reminded of one of M. Paul Bourget’s amiable married heroines, who erred out of sheer goodness of heart, but he only signified his intelligence and sympathy.

‘Then poor Julia,’ Miss Crofton went on hurriedly, ’finds that she has misunderstood her heart.  Recently, ever since she met Captain Lestrange—­of the Guards—­’

‘The fourth?’ asked Merton.

Miss Crofton nodded.  ’She has felt more and more certain that she had misread her heart.  But on each occasion she has felt this—­after meeting the—­well, the next one.’