It is true that the Vicar had offered him his sympathy. At first Grafton had thought that he had misjudged him when he had come to him with a tale of how troubled he had been that Mollie Walter seemed to have been backing up Beatrix in setting herself against his will, how his wife thought the same, and--although he would never have thought of asking her to do so--had of her own accord spoken to Mrs. Walter about it. Grafton had been a little disturbed at finding that the Vicar seemed to know 'all about everything'; but the Vicar had expressed himself so rightly, commending him for the stand he had taken, and the reasons for it, that any doubts he may have come to feel as to whether he had been justified in his opposition to Lassigny's suit, had been greatly lessened. The Vicar thought as he did about it; even rather more strongly. The innocence of girlhood was a most precious thing, and a father who should insist that it should mate with nothing but a corresponding innocence was taking a stand that all men who loved righteousness must thank him for. As an accredited and official lover of righteousness the Vicar perhaps rather overdid his sympathy, which required for expression more frequent visits to the Abbey and a return to a more intimate footing there than he had lately enjoyed. Grafton did not want to be forever discussing the general question of male misdeeds and feminine innocence with a man who appeared from his conversation to have shed all traces of human infirmity except that of curiosity. And there was a good deal too much of Mollie Walter brought into it. What had Mollie Walter to do with it, or he with her? Or indeed the Vicar with her, if it came to that? It seemed that he feared the same sort of danger for her that Grafton had so rightly and courageously warded off for Beatrix. Grafton knew what and whom he referred to, and put aside his proferred confidence. He also began to close up to intimate references to Beatrix's innocence, and came to dislike Beatrix's name on the Vicar's lips. The end of it had been that the Vicar had been returned to his Vicarage, politely but indubitably, with nothing gained but another topic of acrid conversation with his wife. But there was one other person to whom Grafton was beginning to unburden himself. CHAPTER XXI A FINE HUNTING MORNING The big dining-room of Wilborough Hall, with a table at one end of it as a buffet, was full of people eating and drinking and talking and laughing. As Grafton and Barbara and Young George went in, they saw few there whom they did not know, and among the crowd there were many who could already be counted as friends.