“I’d better tell you the history of this affair from the beginning,” he broke out abruptly. “Shortly it is this. Some two or three weeks ago I received a private letter from a lady whose name I will not mention----” “Madame Didier,” interrupted Anne quietly. The Vicar paused. “Madame Didier, since you seem to know my correspondent. It was a letter written to me as the vicar of the parish, begging me to warn Dr. Dakin against your influence with his wife.” Anne did not speak. “Madame Didier gave reasons for this interference,” he went on after a moment. “Reasons which seemed to me to be based on false and scandalous charges. The letter, however, so intimately concerned my friend, that I was compelled to show it to him. It was burnt in my presence, and such was my implicit confidence in you that I wrote a strong, I may say a threatening letter to the lady, forbidding her to circulate libellous reports.” “I am grateful to you,” Anne said. The Vicar glanced at her. “I have since regretted that letter,” he added deliberately. “A fortnight ago, business called me to London, and I spent an evening with my wife’s friends, the Lovells. Madame Didier, whose stay in England has been protracted, was with her aunt. I did not know this when I went to see the Lovells,” he added, “or I should naturally have avoided the chance of an unpleasant encounter. “However, in spite of my protestations, and my refusal to hear your name spoken by her, the lady insisted, and to avoid entering upon unpleasant details, I may say at once that she gave me incontrovertible evidence as to the truth of her assertions.” There was a pause which Anne did not break. She sat quite still, looking into the fire. “I need not say,” pursued the Vicar stiffly, “that though I was constrained to offer an apology to Madame Didier for my somewhat intemperate letter, I repeated my warning to her with regard to the danger of spreading this story.” “Thank you,” said Anne again. The Vicar moved uncomfortably. “Under any other circumstances--had Madame Didier, I mean, merely reported gossip or hearsay, I should immediately have come to you for an explanation, and I should have accepted your bare word against what might to others appear grave suspicion. But unfortunately, as I said, her evidence is incontrovertible. I have seen letters. In short, to put it plainly, Miss Page, to ask for an explanation from you would be the merest farce. It therefore becomes my painful duty----” “An explanation of what?” asked Anne, turning to him with a deliberate movement, and again the Vicar fidgeted under her gaze. “Of--of--a mode of life which proves you to have been unworthy of the position you have held in our midst.” The Vicar gathered himself together; it was time for the peroration, and from force of habit his voice grew full and deep. He reminded himself vigorously of the sanctity of the home, the preservation of the family, and in sonorous tones continued----