’Ah, when I came hither I hoped to find Pan undisturbed.  Well, well, after all, Hephaestus was one of the gods.’

‘How I envy you your quiet mind!’ said Hubert.

’Quiet?  Nay, not always so.  Just now I am far from at peace.  What brings you hither to-day?’

The equivoque was obviated by Mr. Wyvern’s tone.

’I have heard stories about Adela Waltham.  Is there any truth in them?’

‘I fear so; I fear so.’

‘That she is really going to marry Mr. Mutimer?’

He tried to speak the name without discourtesy, but his lips writhed after it.

‘I fear she is going to marry him,’ said the vicar deliberately.

Hubert held his peace.

‘It troubles me.  It angers me,’ said Mr. Wyvern.  ’I am angry with more than one.’

‘Is there an engagement?’

‘I am unable to say.  Tattle generally gets ahead of fact.’

‘It is monstrous!’ burst from the young man.  ’They are taking advantage of her innocence.  She is a child.  Why do they educate girls like that?  I should say, how can they leave them so uneducated?  In an ideal world it would be all very well, but see what comes of it here?  She is walking with her eyes open into horrors and curses, and understands as little of what awaits her as a lamb led to butchery.  Do you stand by and say nothing?’

‘It surprises me that you are so affected,’ remarked the vicar quietly.

’No doubt.  I can’t reason about it.  But I know that my life will be hideous if this goes on to the end.’

‘You are late.’

’Yes, I am late.  I was in Wanley some weeks ago; I did not tell you of it.  I called at their house; they were not at home to me.  Yet Adela was sitting at the window.  What did that mean?  Is her mother so contemptible that my change of fortune leads her to treat me in that way?’

‘But does no other reason occur to you?’ asked Mr. Wyvern, with grave surprise.

‘Other reason!  What other?’

‘You must remember that gossip is active.’

‘You mean that they have heard abou—?’

’Somehow it had become the common talk of the village very shortly after my arrival here.’

Hubert dropped his eyes in bewilderment.

’Then they think me unfit to associate with them?  She—­Adela will look upon me as a vile creature!  But it wasn’t so when I saw her immediately after my illness.  She talked freely and with just the same friendliness as before.’

‘Probably she had heard nothing then.’

’And her mother only began to poison her mind when it was advantageous to do so?’

Hubert laughed bitterly.

‘Well, there is an end of it,’ he pursued.  ’Yes, I was forgetting all that.  Oh, it is quite intelligible; I don’t blame them.  By all means let her be preserved from contagion!  Pooh!  I don’t know my own mind.  Old fancies that I used to have somehow got hold of me again If I ever marry, it must be a woman of the world, a woman with brain and heart to judge human nature.  It is gone, as if I had never had such a thought.  Poor child, to be sure; but that’s all one can say.’