"By Jove, he is a good sort!" John suddenly sprang up. "It means salvation!" he cried. "That's what it means--salvation! I can pay my way. I can look people in the face. I shan't bring the business to ruin and shame. Oh, I've had my lesson--I go steady now! And if I don't pay these good chaps every farthing call me a scoundrel! They are good chaps, Grantley and old Caylesham--devilish good chaps!" "Don't go quite off your head, John dear! Try to take it quietly." "Ah, you take it quietly enough, don't you, old girl?" he exclaimed, coming up to her. "But you've done it all--yes, by heaven you have! I know you didn't like it; I know you hated it. You're so proud, and I like that in you too. But it wasn't a time for pride, and you put yours in your pocket for my sake--yes, for my sake, I know it. We've had our rows, old girl, but if ever a man had a good wife in the end, I have, and I know it." He caught hold of her hands and pulled her to her feet, drawing her towards him at the same time. "Quietly, John," she said, "quietly." "What, don't you want to give me a kiss?" "I'll give you a kiss, but quietly. Poor old John!" She kissed him lightly on the cheek. "Now let me go! I--I'm tired." "Well, you shall rest," he said good-naturedly, and let her go. She sank back in her seat and watched him turn to the cheque again. "It's salvation!" he repeated, and paid no heed to a sudden quick gasp of breath from her throat. Even Caylesham would have allowed that he had no suspicion. But Christine sat a prey to vague forebodings. She felt as though the thing were not finished yet. The dead would not bury its dead. CHAPTER X THE FLINTY WALL There was one point about Jeremy Chiddingfold's system of philosophy--if that name may be allowed to dignify the rather mixed assortment of facts and inferences which he had gathered from his studies: This point was that there was no appeal against facts. Nature was nature, feelings were feelings, and change was development. One thing was right to-day; it became wrong to-morrow without ceasing to have been right yesterday. Let there be an end of ignorant parrot-like chatter about inconsistency. Is evolution inconsistency? Inconsistency with what? He put this question and kindred ones quite heatedly to Mrs. Mumple, who did not at all understand them, and to whom they savoured of unorthodoxy; she had ever distrusted a scientific education. If Jeremy could have put his case in a concrete form, he would have won her sympathy. But she did not know where such general principles would stop, and she had heard that there were persons who impugned the authority of Moses.