The Vicar and Mrs. Mercer were drinking tea with Mrs. Walter and Mollie. There had been a revival of late of the old intercourse between the Vicarage and Stone Cottage. Mollie had been very careful. After that conversation with her mother recorded a few chapters back, she had resolutely made up her mind that no call from outside should lure her away from her home whenever her mother would be likely to want her. With her generous young mind afire with tenderness and gratitude for all the love that had been given to her, for the years of hard and anxious toil that had gone to the making of this little home, in which at last she could make some return for her mother's devotion, she had set herself to put her above everything, and had never flinched from sacrificing her youthful desires to that end, while taking the utmost pains to hide the fact that there was any sacrifice at all. She had had her reward in the knowledge that her mother was happier than she had ever been since her widowhood, with an increased confidence in the security she had worked so hard to gain, and even some improvement in health. The poor woman, crushed more by the hard weight of difficult years than by any definite ailment, had seen her hold on her child loosening, and the friendship that had been so much to her becoming a source of strife and worry instead of refreshment. It had been easier to suffer under the thought of what should be coming to her than to make headway against it. She had no vital force left for further struggle, and to rise and take up the little duties of her day had often been too much for her while she had been under the weight of her fear. That fear was now removed, and a sense of safety and contentment had taken its place. She had been more active and capable during this early winter than at any such period since she had gained her freedom.

Part of Mollie's deeply considered duty had been to recreate the intimacy with the Vicar and Mrs. Mercer, and by this time there had come to be no doubt that they occupied first place again in her attentions. Even Beatrix had had to give way to them, but had found Mollie so keenly delighted in her society when she did enjoy it, that, divining something of what was behind it all, she had made no difficulties, except to chaff her occasionally about her renewed devotion to Lord Salisbury.

Mollie never let fall a hint of the aversion she had conceived for the man, which seemed to have come to her suddenly, and for no reason that she wanted to examine. Some change in her attitude towards him he must have felt, for he showed slight resentments and caprices in his towards her; but Mrs. Mercer exulted openly in the return of her allegiance, and if he was not satisfied that it had extended to himself he had no grounds on which to express complaint. There was no doubt, at least, that Mollie was more at the disposal of himself and his wife than she had been at any time since the Graftons had come to the Abbey, and he put it down as the result of his wife's visit to Mrs. Walter, which he had instigated if not actually directed. So he accepted the renewal of intimacy with not too bad a face, and neither Mrs. Walter nor Mrs. Mercer conceived it to be less complete between all of them than it had been before.

The Vicar had a grievance on this winter afternoon, which he was exploiting over the tea-table.

"The least that could be expected," he was saying, "when the Bishop of the Diocese comes among us is that the clergy of the neighbourhood should be asked to meet him in a friendly way. Mrs. Carruthers gives a great deal of hospitality where it suits her, and I hear that the whole Grafton family has been invited to dinner at Surley Park to-morrow, as of course was to be expected. They have made a dead set at the lady and she at them, and I suppose none of her parties would be complete without a Grafton to grace it, though it's difficult to see what pleasure she can expect the Bishop to take in meeting a young girl like Barbara, or a mere child like the boy."

"Oh, but elderly men do like to have young things about them, Albert," said Mrs. Mercer; "and as this is a purely private family party I dare say Mrs. Carruthers thought that his lordship would prefer to meet lay people rather than the clergy."

The Vicar's mouth shut down, as it always did in company when his wife made a speech of that sort. She had been a good wife to him—that he would have been the first to admit—but he never could get her to curb her tongue, which, as he was accustomed to say, was apt to run away with her; although he had tried hard, and even prayed about it, as he had once told her.

"Personally," he said stiffly, "I am unable to draw this distinction between lay people and clergy, except where the affairs of the church are concerned, and I must say it strikes me as odd that the wife of a priest should wish to do so. In ordinary social intercourse I should have said that a well-educated clergyman, who happened also to be a man of the world, was about the best company that could be found anywhere. His thoughts are apt to be on a higher plane than those of other men, but that need not prevent him shining in the lighter phases of conversation. I have heard better, and funnier, stories told by clergymen over the dinner-table than by any other class of human beings, though never, I am thankful to say, a gross one."

"Oh, yes, dear," said Mrs. Mercer soothingly. "I like funny stories with a clerical flavour the best of all myself. Do tell Mrs. Walter that one about the Bishop who asked the man who came to see him to take two chairs."

"As you have already anticipated the point of the story," said the Vicar, not mollified, "I think I should prefer to save it for another occasion. I was over at Surley Rectory yesterday calling on poor old Mr. Cooper. You have never met him, I think, Mrs. Walter."

"No," she said. "He has been more or less laid up ever since we came here."

"I am afraid he will never get about again. He seems to me to be on his last legs, if I may so express myself."

No objection being made to his doing so, he went on. "He has done good work in his time. He is past it now, poor old man, but in years gone by he was an example to all—full of energy and good works. I have been told that before he came to Surley, and held a small living somewhere in the Midlands, he did not rest until he had raised the endowment by a hundred pounds a year. That means hard unremitting work, in these days when the laity is apt to keep its purse closed against the claims of the church. I always like to give credit where credit is due, and I must say for old Mr. Cooper that he has deserved well of his generation."

"It is nice to think of his ending his days in peace in that beautiful place," said Mrs. Walter. "When Mollie and I went to call there in the summer I thought I had never seen a prettier house and garden of its size."

"I wish we could have the luck to get the living when old Mr. Cooper does go," said Mrs. Mercer artlessly. "I don't want the old gentleman to die yet awhile, naturally, but he can't be expected to hold out very much longer; he is eighty-four and getting weaker every day. Somebody must be appointed after him, and I think myself it ought to be an incumbent of the diocese who has borne the heat and burden of the day in a poorly endowed living."

She was only repeating her husband's oft-spoken words, being ready to take his view in all matters, and using his methods of expression as being more suitable than her own. But he was not pleased with the implied compliment. "I wish you wouldn't talk in that way, Gertrude," he said, in an annoyed voice. "Before such friends as Mrs. Walter and Mollie it may do no harm, but if such a thing were said outside it would look as if I had given rise to the wish myself, which is the last thing I should like to be said. If it so befalls me I shall be content to go on working here where Providence has placed me till the end of the chapter, with no other reward but the approval of my own conscience, and perhaps the knowledge that some few people are the better and worthier for the work I have spent a great part of my life in doing amongst them. At the same time I should not refuse to take such a reward as Surley would be if it were offered to me freely, and it were understood that it was a reward for work honestly done through a considerable period of years. I would not take it under any other conditions, and as for doing anything to solicit it, it would be to contradict everything that I have always stood for."

"Oh, yes, dear," said Mrs. Mercer. "But it wouldn't have done any harm just to have met the Bishop in a friendly way at Surley itself. It might have sort of connected you with the place in his mind. I wish we had been able to keep friends with Mrs. Carruthers, or that Rhoda and Ethel had accepted your offer to preach to-morrow afternoon."

Really, although a devoted helpmate, both in purse and person, this woman was a trial. His face darkened so at her speech that Mrs. Walter struck in hurriedly so as to draw the lightning from the tactless speaker. "The Miss Coopers were hoping the last time they were over here that their brother might be appointed to succeed their father," was her not very sedative effort.

But the lightning was drawn. The lowered brows were bent upon her. "I think it is quite extraordinary," said the Vicar, "that those girls should give themselves away as they do. Really, in these matters there are decencies to be observed. A generation or two ago, perhaps, it was not considered wrong to look upon an incumbency as merely providing an income and a house, just as any secular post might. You get it in the works of Anthony Trollope, a tedious long-winded writer, but valuable as giving a picture of his time. But with the growth of true religion and a more self-devoted spirit on the part of the clergy it is almost approaching the sin of simony to talk about an incumbency in the way those girls do so freely."

"They only said that their brother was very much liked by everybody in the parish," said Mollie, who had seen her mother wince at the attack. "They said if the Bishop knew how suitable he really was, he might look over his youth, and appoint him."

The brows were turned upon Mollie, who was given to understand that such matters as these were beyond her understanding, and that no Bishop who valued his reputation could afford to make such an appointment.

Mollie sat silent under the lecture, thinking of other things. It was enough for her that it was not addressed directly to her mother. Something in her attitude, that may have betrayed the complete indifference towards his views which she had thought her submissively downcast eyes were hiding, must have stung him, for his tone hardened against her, and when he had finished with the question of Surley Rectory, his next speech seemed directed at her, with an intention none of the kindest.

"I'm told that Mrs. Carruthers was seen driving the Bishop over to the meet at Grays this morning," he said. "Of course there would be one or two people there whom he might be glad to meet, but he will have a queer idea of our part of the world if he takes it from people like those noisy Pembertons."

Mollie could not prevent a deep blush spreading over her face at this sudden unexpected introduction of the name. She knew that he must notice it, and blushed all the deeper. How she hated him at that moment, and how she blessed his little wife for jumping in with her "Oh, Albert! Not vulgar, only noisy. And it's all good nature and high spirits. You said so yourself after we had dined there in the summer."

"I think we had better not discuss our neighbours," said Mrs. Walter, almost quivering at her own daring. "The Pembertons have shown themselves very kind and friendly towards us, and personally I like them all."

"So do I," said Mollie, rallying to her mother's side. "Especially the girls. I think they're as kind as any girls I've ever met."

The temper of the official upholder of righteousness was of the kind described by children's nurses as nasty. Otherwise he would hardly have fixed a baleful eye upon Mollie, and said: "Are you sure it's the girls you like best?"

It was at that moment that Bertie Pemberton was announced, his heralding ring at the bell having passed unnoticed.

He told Mollie afterwards that he had noticed nothing odd, having been much worked up in spirit himself, and being also taken aback at finding the room full of outsiders, as he expressed it, instead of only Mollie and her mother.

Mrs. Walter, under the combined stress of the Vicar's speech and Bertie's appearance, was near collapse. When she had shaken hands with him she leant back in her chair with a face so white that Mollie cried out in alarm, and going to her was saved from the almost unbearable confusion that would otherwise have been hers. Mrs. Walter rallied herself, smiled and said there was nothing the matter with her but a sudden faintness which had passed off. She wanted to control the situation, and made the strongest possible mental call upon herself to do so. But her strength was not equal to the task, and, although she protested, she had to allow herself to be led from the room by Mollie and Mrs. Mercer. She was able, however, to shake hands with Bertie and tell him that Mollie should be down in a minute to give him his tea.

He and the Vicar were left alone. The young man was greatly concerned at Mrs. Walter's sudden attack, which, however, he did not connect with his own arrival, and gave vent to many expressions of concern, of the nature of "Oh, I say!" "It's too bad, you know." "Poor lady! She did look bad, and no mistake!"

The Vicar, actually responsible for Mrs. Walter's collapse, and knowing it, yet felt his anger rising hot and uncontrollable against the intruder. His simple expressions of concern irritated him beyond bearing. He had just enough hold over himself not to break out, but said, in his most Oxford of voices: "Don't you think, sir, that as there's trouble in the house you would be better out of it?"

Bertie paused in his perambulation of the little room, and stared at him. Hostility was plainly to be seen in the way in which he met the look, and he said further: "In any case Mrs. Walter won't be able to come down, and my wife and I will have to be going in a few minutes. You can hardly expect Miss Walter to come and sit and talk alone with you while her mother is ill upstairs."

The Vicar's indefensible attack upon Mollie for her indelicacy in making friends with a young man not acceptable to himself had been hidden from Bertie, but some hint of his attitude had presented itself to him, perhaps by way of his sisters. He had given it no attention, esteeming it of no importance what a man so outside his own beat should be thinking of him. But here he was faced unmistakably with strong and unfriendly opposition, and it had to be met.

Bertie had been at Oxford himself, but had not acquired the 'manner,' whether as a weapon of claimed superiority or of offence. He said, quite directly, "What has it got to do with you whether I go or stay? You heard what Mrs. Walter said?"

"It has this to do with me, sir," said the Vicar, beginning to lose hold over himself, and exhibiting through his habitually clipped speech traces of a long since sacrificed Cockney accent, "that I am the man to whom these ladies look for help and advice in their unprotected lives. I'm not going to see them at the mercy of any young gentleman who pushes himself in, it's plain enough to see why, and gets them talked about."

"Gets who talked about and by who?" asked Bertie, innocent of grammatical niceties, but temperamentally quick to seize a salient point.

His firm attitude and direct gaze, slightly contemptuous, and showing him completely master of himself in face of a temper roused to boiling-point, added fuel to keep that temper boiling, though it was accompanied now with trembling of voice and hands, as weakness showed itself to be at its source, and no justified strength of passion.

"Your attentions to Miss Walter have been remarked upon by everybody, sir," continued the furious man. "They are dishonouring to her, and are not wanted, sir. My advice to you is to keep away from the young lady, and not get her talked about. It does her no good to have her name connected with yours. And I won't have her persecuted. I won't have it, I say. Do you hear that?"

"Oh, I hear it all right," said Bertie. "They'll hear it upstairs too if you can't put the curb on yourself a bit. What I ask you is what you've got to do with it. You heard what Mrs. Walter said. That's enough for me, and it'll have to be enough for you. All the rest is pure impudence, and I'm going to take no notice of it."

He sat down in a low chair, with his legs stretched out in front of him. This attitude was owing to the tightness of his buckskins at the knee, but it appeared to the Vicar as a deliberate and insulting expression of contempt.

"How dare you behave like that to me, sir?" he cried. "Are you aware that I am a minister of religion?"

"You don't behave much like one," returned Bertie. "I think you've gone off your head. Anyhow, I'm not going to carry on a brawl with you in somebody else's house. I shall be quite ready to come and have it out with you whenever you like when I leave here—in your vestry, if you like."

"Your manners and speech are detestable, sir," said the Vicar. "You're not fit to come into the house of ladies like these, and if you don't leave it at once—I shall—I shall——"

"You'll what?" asked Bertie. "Put me out? I don't think you could. What I should suggest is that you clear out yourself. You're not in a fit state to be in a lady's drawing-room."

His own anger was rising every moment, but in spite of some deficiencies in brain power he had fairly sound control over the brains he did possess, and they told him that, with two angry men confronted, the one who shows his anger least has an unspeakable advantage over the other.

He was not proof, however, against the next speech hurled at him.

"You are compromising Miss Walter by coming here. If you don't leave off persecuting that young lady with your odious and unwelcome attentions, I shall tell her so plainly, and leave it to her to choose between you and me."

Bertie sprang up. "That's too much," he said, his hands clenched and his eyes blazing. "How dare you talk about my compromising her? And choose between me and you! What the devil do you mean by that?"

The Vicar would have found it hard to explain a speech goaded by his furious annoyance, and what lay behind it. But he was spared the trouble. Mollie came into the room, to see the two men facing one another as if they would be at fisticuffs the next moment. She and Mrs. Mercer coming downstairs had heard the raised voices, and Mrs. Mercer, frightened, had incontinently fled. She had heard such tones from her lord and master before, and knew that she, unfortunately, could do nothing to calm them. Mollie hardly noticed her flustered apology for flight, but without a moment's hesitation went into the room and shut the door behind her.

Bertie was himself in a moment. This was to be his mate; he knew it for certain at that instant, by the way she held her head and looked directly at him as she came into the room. The sudden joy of her presence made the red-faced spluttering man in front of him of no account, and anger against him not worth holding. Only she must be guarded against annoyance, of all sorts and for ever.

He took a step towards her and asked after her mother. If the Vicar had been master enough of himself to be able to take the same natural line, the situation could have been retrieved and he have got out of it with some remains of dignity. It was his only chance, and he failed to take it.

"Mollie," he said, in the dictatorial voice that he habitually used towards those whom he conceived to owe him deference, and had used not infrequently to her in the days when he had represented protective authority to her, "I have told this young man that it isn't fitting that he should be alone here with you, while your mother is ill. She will want you. Besides that, he has acted with gross rudeness towards me. Will you please tell him to go? and I will speak to you afterwards."

Bertie gave her no time to reply. He laughed at the absurd threat with which the speech had ended, and said: "Mr. Mercer seems to think he has some sort of authority over you, Mollie. It's what I came here to ask you for myself. If you'll give it me, my dear, I'll ask him to go, and it will be me that will speak to you afterwards."

It was one of the queerest proposals that a girl had ever had, but confidence had come to him, and the assurance that she was his already. The bliss of capitulation might be postponed for a time. The important thing for the moment was to show the Vicar how matters stood, and would continue to stand, and to get rid of him once and for all.

Mollie answered to his sudden impulse as a boat answers at once to its helm. "Yes," she said simply. "I'll do what you want. Mr. Mercer, I think you have been making mistakes. I'll ask you to leave us now."

She had moved to Bertie's side. He put his hand on her shoulder, and they stood there together facing the astonished Vicar. Something fixed and sure in their conjunction penetrated the noxious mists of his mind, and he saw that he had made one hideous mistake after another. Shame overtook him, and he made one last effort to catch at the vanishing skirts of his dignity.

"Oh, if it's like that," he said with a gulp, "I should like to be the first to congratulate you."

He held out his hand. Neither of them made any motion to take it, but stood there together looking at him until he had turned and left the room.

Then at last they were alone together.