Of course she saw him looking at her--of course she did! "What a rude staring fellow he is to be sure!" she said to herself mentally, and resolved not to look that way again but to fix her attention sternly on the Thirty-nine Articles; still she would have just one peep more.--"There he is again, the great rude creature! What nice blue eyes he has, and such a little love of a moustache! and what on earth can he find to look at so persistently over here?" And down would go the long dark lashes again, and a little conscious blush would rise, and even the tender little ears and supple white neck would be encrimsoned. "It must be Mister Tom," she determined, "that dark ugly man that went in with Mistress Hartshorne could not be him; but he is a very naughty fellow to be staring at a young lady like that." Yet she would go on to excuse him to herself. "Perhaps he does not know any better, poor fellow; he's very young" (she was just seventeen mind you), "and when I know him I will tell him what I think of his rudeness." And then she would wonder to herself whether she ever would know him, and it sent a pang to her little heart when she thought she might not, and then Master Tom would catch her eye, and the tell-tale blush would hang out its pink flag again, and there would be a little flush of happiness, and so _da capo_. Just picture to yourself, Corydon, your little flirtation or _grande passion_ with Phyllis, and you can easily fill up all the blanks and imagine the rest. The Reverend Herbert Pringle, B.A., Oxon, who now filled the living at Hartwood, was a very young man; but a very great man in his own estimation, and in that of some others also, as to family, talents, and ritualistic attainments in the church. He was the cousin, twice removed, of Sir Boanerges Todhunter the great anti-taxpayer and member of the Opposition, belonged to the extensive High Church party at Oxford, had gained some celebrity at the Union Debating Club; and here he was now the regular incumbent (for a term of only five years be it known, for the Sussex Dowager liked always to have a hold on her tenants in the matter of leases, and stretched her authority to the livings she had in her gift) of a respectable church in a good county, where he could do as he pleased--at an age when the majority of his compeers would be struggling along perhaps in their first curacies.