“I am not so happy as to have found a domicile on this side Eden!” murmured Adderley, with a languishing look—­“My humble hut is set some distance apart,—­about a mile beyond the rectory.”

“Then your best neighbour will be the parson,” said Maryllia, gaily--"So improving to your morals!”

“Possibly—­possibly! “assented Adderley—­” Mr. Walden is not exactly like other parsons,—­there is something wonderfully attractive about him—­”

“Something wonderfully conceited and unbearable, you mean!” snapped out Sir Morton—­“Come, come!—­we must be off!  The horses are at the door,—­can’t keep them standing!  Miss Vancourt doesn’t want to hear anything about the parson.  She’ll find him out soon enough for herself.  He’s an upstart, my dear lady—­take my word for it!—­a pretentious University prig and upstart!  You’ll never meet him at Badsworth!—­ha-ha-ha!  Never!  Sorry you can’t dine on Thursday!  Never mind, never mind!  Another time!  Good-bye!”

“Good-bye!” and with a slight further exchange of salutations Maryllia found herself relieved of her visitors.  Of all the four, Adderley alone looked back with a half-appealing smile, and received an encouraging little nod for his pains—­a nod which said ’Yes—­you can come again if you like!’ The wheels of the Pippitt equipage crunched heavily down the drive, and as the grating sound died away, clear on the quiet air came the soft slow chime of the church-bells ringing.  It was near sunset,—­and Walden sometimes held a short simple service of evening prayer at that hour.  Leaning against the open window Maryllia listened.

“How pretty it is!” she said—­“It must be the nearness of the river that makes the tone of the bells so soft and mellow!  Oh, what an insufferable old snob that Pippitt is!  And what a precious crew of ‘friends’ he boasts of!  Lumpton, who, when he was a few years younger, danced the skirt-dance in women’s clothes for forty pounds a night at a New York restaurant!—­Mawdenham, who pawned all his mother’s jewels to pay his losses at Bridge—­and Lady Elizabeth Messing, who is such an abandoned old creature that her own married daughters won’t know her!  Oh, dear!  And I believe the Knighted Bone-Boiler thinks they are quite good style!  That literary man, Longford, was a most unprepossessing looking object,—­a friend of Roxmouth’s too, which makes him all the more unpleasant.  And of course he will at once write off and say he has seen me.  And then—­ and then-dear me!  I wonder where Sir Morton picks these people up!  He doesn’t like the parson here evidently—­’a pretentious University prig and upstart’—­what a strong way of putting it!—­very strong for such a clean-looking old man!  ’A pretentious University prig and upstart’ are you, Mr. Walden!” Here, smiling to herself, she moved out into the garden and called her dog to her side—­“Do you hear that, Plato?  Our next-door neighbour is a prig as well as a parson!- -isn’t it dreadful!” Plato looked up at her with great loving brown eyes and wagged his plumy tail.  “I believe he is,—­and yet—­yet all the same, I think—­yes!—­I think, as soon as a convenient opportunity presents itself, I’ll ask him to dinner.”