There was not much conversation. Miss Churton was rather pale and subdued in manner, speaking little. Fan was shy and ill at ease at this her first meal in the house. Mrs. Churton alone seemed inclined to talk, and looked serene and cheerful; but whether the late scene in the drawing-room had been more transient in its effects in her case, or her self-command was greater, she alone knew. After tea they all went out to sit in the garden for an hour; Miss Churton taking a book with her, which, however, she allowed to rest unread on her lap. Her mother had some knitting, which occupied her fingers while she talked to Fan. The girl, she perceived, was not yet feeling at home with them, and she tried to overcome her diffidence by keeping up an easy flow of talk which required no answer from the other, chiefly about their garden and its products--flowers, fruit, and vegetables. Presently they had a visitor, who came out across the lawn to them unannounced. He shook hands with the Churtons, and then with Fan, to whom he was introduced as Mr. Northcott. A large and rather somewhat rough-looking young man was Mr. Northcott, in a clerical coat, for he was curate of the church at Eyethorne. His head was large, and the hair and a short somewhat disorderly beard and moustache brown in colour; the eyes were blue, deep-set, and habitually down-cast, and had a trick of looking suddenly up at anyone speaking to him. His nose was irregular, his mouth too heavy, and there was that general appearance of ruggedness about him which one usually takes as an outward sign of the stuff that makes the successful emigrant. To find him a curate going round among the ladies in a little rural parish in England seemed strange. He had as little of that professional sleekness of skin and all-for-the-best placidity of manner one expects to see in a clergyman of the Established Church as Mr. Churton had of that confident, all-knowing, self-assured look one would like to see in a barrister's countenance before entrusting him with a brief. He at once entered into conversation with Mrs. Churton, replying to some question she put to him; and presently Fan began to listen with deep interest, for they were discussing the unhappy affairs of one of the Eyethorne poor--a bad man who was always getting drunk, fighting with his wife, and leaving his children to starve. The curate, however, did not seem deeply interested in the subject, and glanced not infrequently at Miss Churton, who had resumed her reading; but it was plain to see that she gave only a divided attention to her book.