The one answer presented itself with pitiless promptness: Dupont had changed her. He had accomplished it himself, with the aid of a handsome face, fine eyes, and an audacity which stopped at nothing; for the clergyman had always felt sure that the audacity was there, although it had not, in Far Edgerley, at least, been much exerted. This was so acutely disagreeable to the man who was thinking of it, that there was in his own eyes (handsome ones, too, in their way--a blue way) angry moisture as he went over its possibilities. He clinched his hand and rode on; it would have fared hardly with the musician had he crossed his path just then. Owen was a clergyman. But he had been a man, and a free one, first; he had not gone from college and seminary directly into the ministry. He was thirty-one years old, and he had taken orders but two years before; the preceding interval had not been spent in country villages. With all this surging feeling, however, he had as yet nothing definite against this stranger--this stranger whose bad manners had been protected by his "genius," and whose bad aspects had not been perceived by the innocent little town. By nothing definite he meant nothing that he could use. But now Chance, having given him three heavy burdens of knowledge to carry (he had carried them as well as he could, with a heavy heart as well)--the knowledge of those three meetings which, if not clandestine, were at least concealed--this same Chance relented so far as to present him with other knowledge--knowledge of a different hue. She put in his possession some recent facts concerning the musician which were proof, and proof positive, against him. But what could Owen do with his facts? If he had not known what he knew of Sara Carroll's interest in him, he could have proceeded against the fellow at once; it needed but the statement which he was now able to make to close every door in Far Edgerley against him, for the little town, though not strait-laced, had a standard of morals as pure as its own air. But if he should do this, might not Dupont take his revenge, or, less than that, amuse himself, as he would call it, by letting the village public learn of his intimate relations with the Farms, or rather with Miss Carroll? Madam Carroll's liking for him, or, rather, for his songs, was known and comprehended. But Miss Carroll's liking was not known; and it had, too, an aspect--and here Frederick Owen felt that he would rather go on forever in silence than have that aspect discussed. Yet something he must do. He decided to go to Major Carroll himself. Infirm as was his health, and secluded as was his life, he was the natural protector of these two ladies, and would wish to know, ought to know, everything that concerned them. He went to the Farms.