Well, the arm was set, and when he was a bit easier we settled round the fire, and he told us that his name was Edgar Linley, and he was an artist, and had been painting the angry sunset that had come before that night’s storm, and got caught in the dusk and so lost his way, as many do on our Downs at home, some not so lucky as him to see a light and get to it.

This Mr. Linley had a way with him like no other man I ever see; not only a way to please women with, but men too.  I never saw my uncle so taken up with anybody; and the long and the short of it was that he stayed there a month, and we nursed him; and at the end of the month I knew no more than I had known that evening when I had seen him looking at Lilian; but he and Lilian, they had learned a deal in that time.

And one evening I was at my bedroom window, and I see them coming up the path in the red light of the evening, walking very close together, and I went down very quick to the parlour, where uncle was just come in to his tea and taking his big boots off, and I sat down there, for I wanted to hear how they’d say it, though I knew well enough what they had got to say.  And they came in and he says, very frank and cheery—­

‘Mr. Verinder,’ he says, ’Lilian and I have made up our minds to take each other, with your consent, for better, for worse.’

And uncle was as pleased as Punch; and as for me, I didn’t believe in God then, or I should have prayed Him to strike them both down dead as they stood.

Why did I hate them so?  And you call yourself a man and a parson, and one that knows the heart of man!  Why did I hate them?  Because I loved him as no woman will ever love you, sir, if you’ll pardon me being so bold, if you live to be a thousand.

He would have understood all about everything with half what I have been telling you.  As it is, I sometimes think that he understood, for he was very gentle with me and kind, not making too much of Lilian when I was by, yet never with a look or a word that wasn’t the look and the word of her good, true lover; and she was very happy, for she loved him as much as that blue-and-white teacup kind of woman can love; and that’s more than I thought for at the time.

He was an orphan, and well off, and there was nothing to wait for, so the wedding was fixed for early in the new year; and I sewed at her new clothes with a marrow of lead in every bone of my fingers.

A truly understanding person might get some meaning out of my words when I say that I loved her in my heart all the time that I was hating her; and the devil himself must have sent out my soul and made use of the rest of me on that night I shall tell you about presently.

It was in the sharp, short, frosty days that brought in Christmas that uncle came home one day from Lewes, looking thunder black, with an eye like fire and a mouth like stone.  And he walked straight into the kitchen where we three were making toast for tea, for Edgar was one of us by this time, and lent a hand at all such little things as young folks can be merry over together.  And uncle says—­