some short absence, and would again, if free, have her chance among the favoured ones of the earth.  What had he to offer to her?  He had taken the Clock House for his mother, and it would be quite as much as he could do, when Mrs Trevelyan should have left the village, to keep up that establishment and maintain himself in London, quite as much as he could do, even though the favours of the ‘D.  R.’ should flow upon him with their fullest tides.  In such circumstances, would it be honourable in him to ask a girl to love him because he found her defenceless in his mother’s house?

‘If there bain’t another for Nuncombe,’ said Mrs. Clegg’s Ostler to Mrs Clegg’s Boots, as Stanbury was driven off in a gig.

‘That be young Stanbury, a-going of whome.’

’They be all a-going for the Clock House.  Since the old ’ooman took to thick there house, there be folk a-comin’ and a-goin’ every day loike.’

‘It’s along of the madam that they keeps there, Dick,’ said the Boots.

’I didn’t care if there’d be madams allays.  They’re the best as is going for trade anyhow,’ said the ostler.  What the ostler said was true.  When there comes to be a feeling that a woman’s character is in any way tarnished, there comes another feeling that everybody on the one side may charge double, and that everybody on the other side must pay double, for everything.  Hugh Stanbury could not understand why he was charged a shilling a mile, instead of ninepence, for the gig to Nuncombe Putney.  He got no satisfactory answer, and had to pay the shilling.  The truth was, that gigs to Nuncombe Putney had gone up, since a lady, separated from her husband, with a colonel running after her, had been taken in at the Clock House.

‘Here’s Hugh!’ said Priscilla, hurrying to the front door.  And Mrs Stanbury hurried after her.  Her son Hugh was the apple of her eye, the best son that ever lived, generous, noble, a thorough man, almost a god!

’Dear, dear, oh dear!  Who’d have expected it?  God bless you, my boy!  Why didn’t you write?  Priscilla, what is there in the house that he can eat?’

‘Plenty of bread and cheese,’ said Priscilla, laughing, with her hand inside her brother’s arm.  For though Priscilla hated all other men, she did not hate her brother Hugh.  ’If you wanted things nice to eat directly you got here, you ought to have written.’

‘I shall want my dinner, like any other Christian in due time,’ said Hugh.  ‘And how is Mrs Trevelyan and how is Miss Rowley?’

He soon found himself in company with those two ladies, and experienced some immediate difficulty in explaining the cause of his sudden coming.  But this was soon put aside by Mrs Trevelyan.

‘When did you see my husband?’ she asked.

‘I saw him yesterday.  He was quite well.’

‘Colonel Osborne has been here,’ she said.

’I know that he has been here.  I met him at the station at Exeter.  Perhaps I should not say so, but I wish he had remained away.’