‘I’m very sorry,’ he said, ’that I could never care much for it.  Don’t think I’m afraid of it—­not I!  I feel the grandeur of its scope, just as I do in the case of astronomy; but I have never brought myself to study either science.  A narrowness of mind, no doubt.  I can’t go into such remote times and regions.  I love the sunlight and the green fields of this little corner of the world—­ too well, perhaps:  yes, perhaps too well.’

After one of these walks, he remarked to Mrs. Lilywhite: 

’It’s my impression that Mr. Peak has somehow been misled in his choice of a vocation.  I don’t think he’ll do as a churchman.’

‘Why not, Henry?’ asked his wife, with gentle concern, for she still spoke of Peak’s ‘quiet moral force’.

’There’s something too restless about him.  I doubt whether he has really made up his mind on any subject whatever.  Well, it’s not easy to explain what I feel, but I don’t think he will take Orders.’

Calling at the vicarage one afternoon in September, Godwin found Mrs Lilywhite alone.  She startled him by saying at once: 

‘An old acquaintance of yours was with us yesterday, Mr. Peak.’

‘Who could that be, I wonder?’

He smiled softly, controlling his impulse to show quite another expression.

‘You remember Mr. Bruno Chilvers?’

‘Oh, yes!’

There was a constriction in his throat.  Struggling to overcome it, he added: 

‘But I should have thought he had no recollection of me.’

’Quite the contrary, I assure you.  He is to succeed Mr. Bell of St Margaret’s, at Christmas; he was down here only for a day or two, and called upon my husband with a message from an old friend of ours.  It appears he used to know the Warricombes, when they lived at Kingsmill, and he had been to see them before visiting us; it was there your name was mentioned to him.’

Godwin had seated himself, and leaned forward, his hands grasping the glove he had drawn off.

‘We were contemporaries at Whitelaw College,’ he observed.

’So we learnt from him.  He spoke of you with the greatest interest; he was delighted to hear that you contemplated taking Orders.  Of course we knew Mr. Chilvers by reputation, but my husband had no idea that he was coming to Exeter.  What an energetic man he is!  In a few hours he seemed to have met everyone, and to have learnt everything.  My husband says he felt quite rebuked by such a display of vigour!’

Even in his discomposure, graver than any that had affected him since his talks with Buckland Warricombe, Peak was able to notice that the Rev. Bruno had not made a wholly favourable impression upon the Lilywhites.  There was an amiable causticity in that mention of his ‘display of vigour’, such as did not often characterise Mrs Lilywhite’s comments.  Finding that the vicar would be away till evening, Godwin stayed for only a quarter of an hour, and when he had escaped it irritated and alarmed him to reflect how unusual his behaviour must have appeared to the good lady.