Higgs, the irrepressible, received him with joy.  ’It’s you that are the good sight for sore eyes,’ he said.  ’Not but what we’ve been ’aving an uncommon peaceful time for Lent.  The vicar’s lady she’s took bad and took to bed.’

The curate reproved the wicked Higgs, but he inquired after the health of the invalid.

‘I hope Mrs. Moore is not very ill?’

’Bless you, no, sir; she’s ’ale and ’earty.  Cook says she’s sure she’ve fell out with some one.  That’s her way; she takes to bed when she’ve fell out with any one.  It makes them repent of their sins.’

A soft grey mist lay over land and sea.  The church and vicarage were grey and wet.  The beeches at the vicarage gate had broken forth in a myriad buds of silver green, and all the buds were tipped with water, and the grey stems were stained and streaked.  The yew trees in the churchyard were bedewed with tiny drops.  At the little gate that led from the vicarage into the churchyard, between the yew trees and the beeches, the curate waited for Violetta, after evensong.  She came out of the old grey porch and down the path between the graves and the yew trees with her prayer-book in her hand.  She looked like an Easter lily that holds itself in bud till the sadness of Lent is past, so pure, so modest, such a perfect thing from the hand of God.

She stopped and started when she saw her lover, and then greeted him with a little smile, but blent with some reproachful dignity.

’I am glad you have come at last, for I have been wanting to speak to you.  Poor mamma has been very poorly and ill.  It has grieved her very much indeed that you should have so misunderstood her motives, and treated her so rudely.  Mamma takes things like that most deeply to heart.’

‘She told you why I treated her rudely?’

’Yes, she told me, but she did not tell papa anything about it; it would only vex papa and do no good.  Mamma told me to tell you that she had made up her mind to forgive you, and to say no more about it, although she was deeply grieved that you should have so misunderstood her.’

‘Yes,’ said the curate vaguely, for he did not know what else to say.

’Of course, as to the necklace, it may be a matter of opinion as to whether mamma judged rightly or not; but no one who knows her could doubt that her one desire was to do what was right.  It is quite true what she says:  that the stone was most unsuitable to the station of those people; every one says that the man was a very common and vulgar-looking person; and of course to regard such a thing with superstitious veneration is a very great sin, from which she saved them as long as she kept it.  Mamma says of course she knew she ran the risk of being misunderstood in acting as she did, but she thought it her duty to run that risk if by that means she could save anything that God had entrusted to her keeping from being misused.  You know what mamma is; there is nothing she would not do if she thought it right.’