But Ann Holland's tearful face, with its expression of profound grief and pity, was too real for her story to be a dream. He, David Chantrey, the rector of Upton, whom all men looked up to and esteemed, had a wife, who was whispered about among them all as a victim to a vile and degrading sin. A strong shock of revulsion ran through his veins, which had been thrilling with an unquiet happiness all the day. There was an inexplicable, mysterious misery in it. If he had come home to find her dead, he could have borne to look upon her lying in her coffin, knowing that life could never be bright again for him; but he would have held up his head among his fellow-men. It would have been no shame or degradation either for him or her to have laid her in the tranquil churchyard, beside their little child, where he could have seen her grave through his vestry window, and gone from it to his pulpit, facing his congregation, sorrowful but not disgraced. He was just coming back to his people with higher aims, and greater resolves, determined to fight more strenuously against every form of evil among them; and this was the first gigantic sin, which met him on his own threshold and his own hearth. "She's so young," pleaded Ann Holland, frightened at the ashy hue that had spread over his face, "and she's been so lonesome. Then it was always easy to get it, when she felt low; for Mrs. Bolton's servants rule the house, and there's the best of everything in her cellars. James Brown says he could never refuse Mrs. Chantrey, she was so miserable, poor thing! But now you will take her home; and she'll have you, and Master Charlie. You'll save her, sir, sooner or later; never fear." "Let me go and see her," he said, in a choking voice. Ann Holland opened the door so carefully that the latch did not click or the hinges creak; and, shading the light with her hand, she stood beside him for a minute or two, as he looked down upon his sleeping wife. She did not dare to lift her eyes to his face; but she knew that all the light and glow of gladness had fled from it, and a gray look of terror had crept across it. He was a very different man from the one who had been seated on her hearth a short half-hour ago. He bade her leave him alone, and without a light, and she obeyed him, though reluctantly, and with an undefined fear of him in his wretchedness.