Grafton didn't tell Caroline to write her note of invitation to Mrs. Mercer until the next morning. It was sent to the Vicarage by hand, with instructions to the bearer to wait for an answer.

Mrs. Mercer took it into her husband's study. In the ordinary way she would have done this with some expression of gaiety and pleasure, for she took such variations of life as happy surprises, and could be moved to excitement even by an invitation to a flower-show, with a garden party attached.

But this time her face did not light up as she opened and read the note, and only the thought of the waiting messenger sent her to her husband's room at once.

"Here is an invitation from Caroline for us to dine at the Abbey to-night," she said, with a grave face. "Do you wish me to accept it?"

The Vicar was very busy. He looked up from his writing as if he could hardly detach his thoughts from what he was doing, and said: "What is to-night? Thursday. There's nothing on, I think. Yes, accept it." Then he turned to his writing again.

Mrs. Mercer wrote her answer and sent it out. When she had done so she sat with a thoughtful look upon her face for some time, which gradually changed to one of decision. Then she went in to her husband's study again, and shut the door after her as if she meant to stay there. This was unusual. She was not made to feel herself welcome in that room in the morning hours.

She was not to be made welcome now. The Vicar had left his writing-table and was walking up and down the room, with a look on his face that was not pleasant to see. It didn't grow any more pleasant as he saw her shut the door behind her with that air which meant that she had something serious to say to him. "My dear, you're just interrupting me in a train of thought," he said in an annoyed voice. "If you want to talk about anything do please wait until lunch time, or at least until the post comes. I shall have a few minutes to spare then."

For answer she sat herself down in a high-backed chair which stood by the empty fireplace. "Albert," she said, "I must speak to you. Things are wrong with us all round, and I am kept out of it all. If I am to be a true wife to you, and stand by your side in all the difficulties and troubles which come to us with the people round, I ought to know what is going on, and not be kept in the dark, as you always keep me."

Tears stood in the little lady's eyes. She had been such a good loyal wife to him, putting all her money at his disposal, and allowing him to treat it as if it were his own, and even as if she ought to be thankful to him for the comfortable home that he could not have given her himself. She had never felt any disturbance of mind on that score, and did not feel any now. They were one, and hers was his. But for the trust and obedience she had given him, never questioning his wisdom, nor failing to take his side in the repeated disputes and estrangements that had come about between them and their neighbours, he did owe her return. The time had come when she could no longer go on putting her whole trust in him, if he did not show some corresponding trust in her.

He stopped in his walking up and down, and stood before her, the arrogant frown and look on his face which she knew so well. But something now told her that she must not be awed into submission by it, as previously she had always been.

"Really, I don't understand you," he said. "You must leave me to conduct my own affairs in my own way, as you have always done. You can help me in the difficulties I have in my work—and they are heavy enough, God knows, with the sort of people I have to deal with here—by giving me peace and quietness in my own home. You can help me in no other way. The troubles I have fall upon my own shoulders, and I am acting rightly by you in trying to keep you unaffected by them."

"But they do not only fall upon you," she said quietly. "We make friends with people, and everything seems to be going happily; and then suddenly we are not friends any longer. Often I have had to find it out for myself, and sometimes you don't even tell me what has happened to cause the change. It was so with the Beckleys. I have never known why we left off being friends with them. And I have never known why there was such disturbance before Mollie Walter was married. It would have been natural, as she was almost like your own daughter, as you so often used to say, that she should have been married from here, and that Mrs. Walter should have stayed on at the Cottage until after she was married. But her house at Wilborough was hurried on for her so that Mollie could be married from there, and you were not even asked to take part in the ceremony."

He had resumed his pacing of the room during the progress of this speech, and his look was not so arrogant as it had been.

"I certainly don't propose to go into old questions of that sort," he said. "They are over and done with, and—"

"I don't wish to go into them either," she said. "I didn't press you to take me into your confidence then, and I won't do it now. But I think you ought to tell me what has been the trouble with the Graftons. You have criticised them from time to time, as you criticise everybody,"—he frowned at this sentence, which was unlike any she had ever used to him—"but we have been on friendly terms with them for over a year. At first we were on very friendly terms with them, and you used to go to the Abbey in just the same way as you used to run in and out of Stone Cottage. They have always been as nice as possible to me, but I couldn't help seeing that they were not as friendly towards you as they had been. When you left off going there in the intimate way you did at first, they still asked us to the house fairly often. But this invitation to dinner to-night is the first we have had from them for weeks."

He did not usually allow her to speak at this length without interrupting her, but when you are brought to book about anything it is as well to know exactly what you have to meet. It may not after all be so difficult to meet it as you had anticipated.

It was with something like his customary tone that he said: "We have often discussed the Graftons together, and you know well enough that there are many things about them which I, as a priest of the Church, cannot approve of. If there has been any decline of intimacy between us it is for that reason and that reason alone. They are not what I thought they were when they first came here, and though in the position in which I stand towards them I must do my best to keep the peace for the good of the parish, I shall not surrender one jot or tittle of what I stand for here, for the sake of keeping in with the rich man of the parish."

It sounded very well to him, but she rather spoilt it by asking in a quiet voice: "What do you stand for here, Albert?"

Whether or not the necessity of explaining to her the whole gist and meaning of the Ordination Service withheld him from replying to her at once, she had time to go on before he spoke.

"I haven't been able to prevent myself asking that question lately," she said. "I was very much troubled by the way you behaved"—another phrase to which his ears were quite unaccustomed from her—"about the Coopers. When you thought that the Bishop had offered Surley to Mr. Leadbetter you didn't tell me anything about it, but you took me over there so that you might tell them, though you knew what disappointment it would bring them. Then when they told you that the living had been offered to Denis, you congratulated them, but you spoke in such a different way to me as we came home; and you did your best to stir up trouble about it before you knew that Denis had refused the offer. And even when that did come out, you couldn't give him any credit for what was a fine action on his part, as I think, but could only talk about the way his sisters were served right in doing what they had, and put it about what they had done, to discredit them."

The Vicar had in fact arrived at the conclusion that Rhoda and Ethel had opened the Bishop's letter addressed to their brother, which it is probable that no one else would have guessed at; and righteous indignation at such an action had been his chief contribution to the talk that had resulted from the Bishop's offer and its refusal. It was somewhat disturbing to find that his wife had not taken that indignation at its face value. He defended himself at some length against her charge of uncharity, but her silence and her downcast look warned him that he was not impressing her, and as the ground was not of the strongest he relinquished it.

"But we will have an end to all this," he said, catching at his authority, so unexpectedly being questioned. "I can quite see that my silence as to the Graftons may have been misunderstood by you. The fact is that for months I have been coming to see that my position here will become impossible unless the Graftons refrain from meddling in affairs which are my concern and not theirs. I went down to the Abbey yesterday to have it out with Grafton once and for all. Either I must be allowed my own way here in matters which appertain to my office, and that must be definitely understood, or else I must fight for it, and all pretence of intimacy and friendship must be abandoned between us. Matters have come to a crisis. I found Grafton quite irreconcileable. He takes his stand, as a rich man of that type always does, upon his money."

"Oh, Albert!" she exclaimed.

"I don't mean to say, of course, that he mentions his money, but it comes down to that. He has bought this place, and imagines that he has bought all the people who live in it body and soul. I told him very plainly that he had not bought me, and that I was not for sale, and I flatter myself that I have given him something to think about. I was at first very angry, as you no doubt saw when I came home, but I have been thinking long and earnestly too. If you had not come in just now with a series of accusations which are really quite unjustified and exceptionally painful in the midst of a crisis of this sort, I should have told you in a very short time where my deliberations had led me. They are serious enough, and as you are concerned in the matter as well as myself, I should have consulted you before making any actual decision. But I feel that I can no longer go on here under such conditions. The work I have spent some of the best years of my life over is made of no avail, and to go on with it would only be to invite further failure. Better face all the distress of a complete break, and the expense of a move, and get away from the place. I had almost made up my mind to do that, and if you give me your concurrence I shall take the step without further hesitation. You know that when Sherlock sent the photograph of that charming little house at Darthead, which he was prepared to put at the disposal of anybody who would go and help him there, you said you wished we were in a position to go ourselves. Well, let us go, I say. It will mean some sacrifice of means, and I shall not be the ultimate authority at Darthead, as I have been here. But there will be less to keep up, and with an older man than he had anticipated getting, Sherlock would only be too glad to give a free hand. In fact he said that if he could get somebody whom he could thoroughly trust, he should try to get away for a year at least, and leave his curate in complete charge. Are you ready to make this new departure with me, Gertrude, and support me loyally in my reasons for making it?"

By the time he had come to the end of this speech, he had forgotten the beginning. But she had not, and a proposal that otherwise would have found her enthusiastic, for she liked change, and the photograph of the house at Darthead had pleased her enormously, left her for the time unmoved. For his account of his interview with Grafton by no means tallied with certain facts in her own possession.

His representation of himself as disapproving of the Graftons to such an extent that he had finally been forced to deliver an ultimatum was one of them. He had overwhelmed them with censure when he had thought he had anything to complain about, but any approach on their part to intimacy had always been responded to by him, and it was only when it showed signs of dropping again that he had reverted to his attitude of disapproval. That disapproval had certainly increased during the last few months, in which the intimacy had been withheld, but he had shown himself almost delighted to receive Grafton's note asking him to come and see him, and had certainly not gone down to the Abbey with any idea of delivering an ultimatum. He had returned in what was almost a fury, and she had sat silent and depressed while he had covered the whole Grafton family with abuse, but had not told her anything of what the new trouble was about; nor had she asked him. And yet he had made no difficulty about her accepting Caroline's invitation to dinner that evening. No doubt he had persuaded himself of the truth of what he was saying, even as he said it, as his way was. But it carried no conviction to her.

"I think," she said quietly, "that it would be better for us to go away from here if we cannot keep friends with any one about us."

Something warned him not to take exception to this speech, or to expatiate further upon the offences he had received. "We can put all that behind us now," he said. "I have not been able to make headway against the forces arrayed against me here, and it will be better for us to start entirely afresh. There is no need to keep up any ill-feeling against even the Graftons. That is why we can dine with them to-night, on the old friendly terms. If I had not decided to leave the place we should have been obliged to refuse their invitation. I think you will find no unpleasantness there, if you do and say nothing to arouse it yourself. When they hear we are going, perhaps they may even be rather sorry. Whoever comes here after me—Grafton will have to find somebody himself, and I wish him luck of the job, for a living of this value—I don't think he will easily find a more devoted parish priest than I have been, or a Vicar's wife more ready to do her duty than you have been, my dear."

This tribute, thoroughly deserved but so rarely paid by him, did not bring instant grateful delighted response from her, as usually it would have done. Her eyes had been forced open, and could not be closed again by a careless word of compliment. She knew that even in his last speech he had not spoken the entire truth to her. His easy words, and his sudden changes, for which there was always a reason, but a reason that would not stand any test of sincerity, sounded different to her now. Would she ever be persuaded and convinced by them again?

He hardly knew how much of truth and how much of falsehood there was in his words himself. Although he had played lightly with the idea of going to Darthead—his friend had asked him if he knew of a curate, but it was not certain that he would accept the offer he would make of himself, or that he had not by this time found one—all his thoughts had been taken up with the fight he was going to have with Grafton. It was to have begun that very evening over Grafton's dinner table, with a statement of exactly where he stood that should be unmistakeable. Yesterday he had been unprepared, but now he had his speeches ready; he had been rehearsing some of them when his wife had come in to him. Grafton would knuckle under; men of the Vicar's temperament never allow for answers to the speeches they compose beforehand.

He had not projected his mind clearly into the future, as to what should happen after he had gained his victory. Grafton had said that if he stayed on at Abington he should no longer treat him as a friend. Perhaps he imagined him so overcome by his defeat that he would hardly dare to hold aloof from him. Perhaps a little whisper of reason in a corner of his mind prepared him for that complete revulsion of feeling which came to him under his wife's unexpected attack, and made him as eager to escape the contest, and to go, as a few minutes earlier he had been to engage in it and to stay on immoveable.

He had hardly had time to gauge the importance of her change of attitude towards him. He had not been able to beat down her awkward enquiries into his conduct as previously he had always nipped the mildest of protests from her, and kept his dominance over her. But he was far from suspecting that his reign of unreason was over. She had gone farther in questioning, and even criticising him, than ever before, but he only had to treat her with a little more care to bring her to his feet again, accepting and for the most part admiring everything that he said or did.

But another little whisper of caution from a corner of his mind warned him that he had better cut the knot of the difficulties which had at last aroused that spirit of revolt in her, get away from it all, and start afresh. His mind swung round instantly to a strong desire to get away from it all, and with credit to himself. Before he had finished the speech in which he broached his new-found intention to her, he saw himself leaving Abington with the warmly expressed regrets of his parishioners in his ears; and, if the vision of an illuminated address and a handsome piece of plate did not present itself to him quite so early, it did later.

The next morning Grafton went down to his Estate Office in the village to see Worthing. They had a little business to transact together. When it had been finished Grafton said, "By the bye, the Mercers dined with us last night. They brought rather a surprising piece of news. Mercer has made up his mind that he has borne the heat and burden of the day in Abington long enough. He is going to retire, and live in Devonshire—in a village where he can do a little clerical work for a friend."

Worthing stared at him open-mouthed, and then laughed heartily. "By Jove, you're a wonder," he said. "How did you do it?"

"How did I do what? I don't know what you're talking about. I'm telling you about Mercer. It's a charming house they're going to. Mrs. Mercer brought a photograph of it. Mercer doesn't want to live in idleness. Though he's borne the burden and heat of the day in this humming hive of population, he still feels he has a few more years of work in him for the good of the community. He isn't going to be a curate exactly; he's going to help his friend, if he doesn't fall out with him—but he didn't say that."

"Is he really going, or are you pulling my leg?"

"Why should I pull your leg? He's going next month. He's already looking about for somebody to get up a testimonial to him. He didn't tell me that either, but I gathered it. He hoped there'd be no fuss. He'd prefer to say good-bye to his friends and go quietly—no illuminated addresses, or anything of that sort. But I gathered that he won't refuse one if it is offered. I rather fancy he has you in his mind, James, as the right person to see about it."

"I'm damned if I do," said Worthing.