But such opinions as Bainton entertained concerning his master, he kept to himself, and having once grasped the fact that any mention of Miss Vancourt’s ways or Miss Vancourt’s looks appeared to displease rather than to entertain the Reverend John, he avoided the subject altogether.  This course of action on his part, if the truth must be told, was equally annoying to Walden, who was in the curious mental condition of wishing to know what he declined to hear.

For the rest, the village generally grew speedily accustomed to the presence of the mistress of the Manor.  She had fulfilled her promise of paying a visit to Josey Letherbarrow, and had sat with the old man in his cottage, talking to him for the better part of two hours.  Rumour asserted that she had even put the kettle on the fire for him, and had made his tea.  Josey himself was reticent,—­and beyond the fact that he held up his head with more dignity, and showed a touch of more conscious superiority in his demeanour, he did not give himself away by condescending to narrate any word of the lengthy interview that had taken place between himself and ‘th’ owld Squire’s little gel.’  One remarkable thing was noticed by the villagers and commented upon,—­Miss Vancourt had now passed two Sundays in their midst, and had never once attended church.  Her servants were always there at morning service, but she herself was absent.  This occasioned much whispering and head-shaking in the little community, and one evening the subject was openly discussed in the bar-room of the ‘Mother Huff’ by a group of rustic worthies whose knowledge of matters theological and political was, by themselves, considered profound.  Mrs. Buggins had started the conversation, and Mrs. Buggins was well known to be a lady both pious and depressing.  She presided over her husband’s ‘public’ with an air of meek resignation, not unmixed with sorrowful protest,—­she occasionally tasted the finer cordials in the bar-room, and was often moved to gentle tears at the excellence of their flavour,—­she had a chronic ‘stitch in the side,’ and a long smooth pale yellow countenance from which the thin grey hair was combed well back from the temples in the frankly unbecoming fashion affected by the provincial British matron.  She begun her remarks by plaintively opining that “it was a very strange thing not to see Miss Vancourt at church, on either of the Sundays that had passed since her return—­very strange!  Perhaps she was ‘High’?  Perhaps she had driven into Riversford to attend the ‘processional’ service of the Reverend Francis Anthony?”

“Perhaps she ain’t done nothing of the sort!”—­growled a thick-set burly farmer, who with a capacious mug of ale before him was sucking at his pipe with as much zeal as a baby at its bottle—­“Ef you cares for my ’pinion, which, m’appen you doan’t, she’s neither Low nor ’Igh.  She’s no Seck.  If she h’longed to a Seck, she wouldn’t be readin’ on a book under the Five Sisters last Sunday marnin’ when the bells was a-ringin’ for church time.  I goes past ‘er, an’ I sez ‘Marnin,’ mum!’ an’ she looks up smilin’-like, an’ sez she:  ’Good-marnin!’ Nice day, isn’t it?’ ‘Splendid day, mum,’ sez I, an’ she went on readin’, an’ I went on a walkin’.  I sez then, and I sez now, she ain’t no Seck!”