“And yet, what?” asked the Canon.

“And yet—­well, I know I am foolish, and I do idealise people and make up heroes—­I know I do!  It is such a pleasure to admire people, isn’t it?  And after he gave up being heir to Groombridge Castle!  I was staying there when poor, dear Lord Groombridge got the news of his ordination, and it was all so sad and so beautiful, and now I can’t bear to think that Father Molyneux is sorry already that he gave it all up.”

“Sorry that he gave it up—!”

Adela gave a little jump in her chair.  It made her so nervous to see a blind man excited.  But curiosity was strong within her.

“I am afraid it is quite true; a friend of mine who knows him quite well, told me.”

“Told you what?”

“That he was unhappy, and has doubts or troubles of some kind.  I didn’t understand what exactly, but she knows that he will give it all up—­the vows and all that, I mean—­if——­”

“If what?”

Adela was not really wanting in courage.

“If a certain very rich woman would marry him.  It seems such a come-down, so very dull and dreadful, doesn’t it?”

“You know all that’s a lie!”

“Well, it was all told to me.”

“But you knew there was not a word of truth in it, only you wanted to see how I would take it.  And I thought you were a kind-hearted woman!  How blind I am!”

Adela was galled to the quick.  A quarrel, a scolding, would have been tolerable, and perhaps exciting, but this naive disappointment in herself, this judgment from the man to whom she had been so good, was too much!

“I thought it was much more kind to let you know what everybody is saying, that you might help him.  I am very sorry I have made a mistake, and that I must be going now.  It is much later than I thought.”

“Must you?” There was the faintest sarcasm in the very polite tone of the Canon’s voice.

Nor had this conversation been all; for out at dinner that night the Canon had been worried with much the same story from a totally different quarter.  It was after the ladies had left the dining-room, and the gossip had been rougher.

He gave all his thoughts to brooding over the matter next day.  Mark could not have managed well—­must have done or said something stupid, and made enemies, he reflected gloomily.

Canon Nicholls had been young once, and almost as popular a preacher as Mark, and he did not underrate the difficulties.  But it was his firm persuasion that, with tact and common-sense they were by no means insurmountable.  What really distressed the old man was that perhaps Mark had been right in thinking that he personally could not surmount them.  And it was Canon Nicholls’s doing that he was not by this time a novice in a Carthusian Monastery!  Therefore the Canon’s soul was heavy with anxiety as to whether he had made a great mistake.

“He must be a fool, or else it’s just possible that he has got an uncommonly clever enemy.”  The last thought revived the old man a little, and he received his tea without any of the demonstrations of disgust he had shown on drinking his coffee at breakfast.