‘Speak for yourself, Mrs. Pettifer,’ said Miss Pratt.  ’Under no circumstances can I imagine myself resorting to a practice so degrading.  A woman should find support in her own strength of mind.’

‘I think,’ said Rebecca, who considered Miss Pratt still very blind in spiritual things, notwithstanding her assumption of enlightenment, ’she will find poor support if she trusts only to her own strength.  She must seek aid elsewhere than in herself.’

Happily the removal of the tea-things just then created a little confusion, which aided Miss Pratt to repress her resentment at Rebecca’s presumption in correcting her—­a person like Rebecca Linnet! who six months ago was as flighty and vain a woman as Miss Pratt had ever known —­so very unconscious of her unfortunate person!

The ladies had scarcely been seated at their work another hour, when the sun was sinking, and the clouds that flecked the sky to the very zenith were every moment taking on a brighter gold.  The gate of the little garden opened, and Miss Linnet, seated at her small table near the window, saw Mr. Tryan enter.

‘There is Mr. Tryan,’ she said, and her pale cheek was lighted up with a little blush that would have made her look more attractive to almost any one except Miss Eliza Pratt, whose fine grey eyes allowed few things to escape her silent observation.  ’Mary Linnet gets more and more in love with Mr. Tryan,’ thought Miss Eliza; ’it is really pitiable to see such feelings in a woman of her age, with those old-maidish little ringlets.  I daresay she flatters herself Mr. Tryan may fall in love with her, because he makes her useful among the poor.’  At the same time, Miss Eliza, as she bent her handsome head and large cannon curls with apparent calmness over her work, felt a considerable internal flutter when she heard the knock at the door.  Rebecca had less self-command.  She felt too much agitated to go on with her pasting, and clutched the leg of the table to counteract the trembling in her hands.

Poor women’s hearts!  Heaven forbid that I should laugh at you, and make cheap jests on your susceptibility towards the clerical sex, as if it had nothing deeper or more lovely in it than the mere vulgar angling for a husband.  Even in these enlightened days, many a curate who, considered abstractedly, is nothing more than a sleek bimanous animal in a white neck-cloth, with views more or less Anglican, and furtively addicted to the flute, is adored by a girl who has coarse brothers, or by a solitary woman who would like to be a helpmate in good works beyond her own means, simply because he seems to them the model of refinement and of public usefulness.  What wonder, then, that in Milby society, such as I have told you it was a very long while ago, a zealous evangelical clergyman, aged thirty-three, called forth all the little agitations that belong to the divine necessity of loving, implanted in the Miss Linnets, with their seven or eight lustrums and their unfashionable ringlets, no less than in Miss Eliza Pratt, with her youthful bloom and her ample cannon curls.