‘How glad I am,’ he exclaimed, ’to be able to talk to you!  I should have been in the utmost difficulties.  Think of my position if I had been without a friend in the town.  Then, indeed, but for Miss Redwing I should have heard nothing even yet.’

‘She wrote to you?’

’Not to me; she mentioned the matter in a letter to my aunt, Mrs. Rossall.’

‘Did Beatrice—­you let me question?—­did she know?’

’Only, she says, in consequence of a letter my father addressed to Mr. Baxendale.’

The lady smiled again.

’I ask because Beatrice is now and then a little mysterious to me.  I spoke to her of that letter in the full belief that she must have knowledge of the circumstances.  She denied it, yet, I thought, as if it were a matter of conscience to do so.’

’I think it more than likely that my aunt had written to her on the subject.  And yet—­no; she would not have denied it to you.  That would be unlike her.’

‘Yes, I think it would.’

Mrs. Baxendale mused.  Before she spoke again a servant entered the room with tea.

‘You will be glad of a cup, I am sure,’ said the lady.  ’And now, what do you propose to do?  Shall you return to London?’

‘Oh, no!  I shall stay in Dunfield till I am able to see her.’

’Very well.  In that case you will not refuse our hospitality.  The longer you stay the better pleased I shall be.’

She would hear of no difficulties.

‘I wouldn’t ask you,’ she said, ’if I were not able to promise you any degree of privacy you like.  A sitting-room is at your disposal—­begging to be occupied since my boy Charlie went away.  My husband is over head and ears in electioneering business, foolish man, and I can’t tell you how I feel the need of someone to talk to on other subjects than the manufacture of votes.  Where is your luggage?’

Wilfrid named the hotel.

’It shall be fetched.  And now I’ll ask my niece to come and pour out tea for us.’

With the entrance of Beatrice the conversation naturally took a different turn.  She heard with becoming interest of Wilfrid’s establishment as a guest, and, after a little talk of Mrs. Rossall and the twins, led to the subject of certain ‘revivalist’ meetings then being held in Dunfield, an occasion of welcome excitement to such of the inhabitants as could not absorb themselves in politics.  Mrs. Baxendale seemed to regard the religious movement dispassionately, and related a story she had from her husband of a certain prominent townsman driven to such a pass by his wife’s perpetual absence from home on revivalist expeditions, that he at length fairly turned the key on her in her bedroom, and through the keyhole bade her stay there till she had remembered her domestic duties.  He was that night publicly prayed for at a great meeting in the Corn Exchange as one who, not content with losing his own soul, did his best to hold back others from the way of grace.