“Go away! Leave Hilfont!” she exclaimed with a gasp of amazement. “Why should we go away? Mrs. Crofton was good enough to ask us for a week, and I am sure you could do your duty quite as well here as at the Rectory. Oh, please, Mrs. Crofton, listen! The only sick people I know of are that old man at the turnpike, and his blind daughter--he could visit them quite as well going from Hilfont as from the Rectory. I believe this is the nearest of the two.” “Oh, but Mr. Williams from the little chapel goes to see old Johnnie Dunn,” interrupted little Derwie; “he was there yesterday, and Martha’s quite well now, and goes to chapel like anything. Miss Reredos, do you know Martha wasn’t always blind? she used to work and make dresses when she was young. Once she lived in Simonborough and learned her trade, and I suppose it was there she learned to go to chapel. Martha says they’re not Church-folks at all. I don’t think they want Mr. Reredos to go there.” “You’re not very complimentary, Derwie,” said the Rector, with a slight quiver of his lip, which I recognized as a sign of the passion and deep excitement in which he was. With that wild pain and mortification tugging at his heart, it would have been a relief to him to burst out in an ebulition of rage or impatience against somebody, and I instinctively put out my hand to protect my boy. “But it is sometimes my duty to go where they don’t want me,” he added, with a laugh as significant, “and with many regrets and many thanks to Mrs. Crofton we must still go back to-day. Laura, get ready, please.” In pity for the unfortunate Rector, who, I saw, longed to escape from the room, the inquisitive looks of Mrs. Clara, who was present, and the distinct statement from Derwie, which I knew to be impending, to the effect, that of his own certain knowledge nobody was ill in the village, I interposed, and we made a compromise--the Rector left us and his sister stayed. Miss Reredos was profoundly pleased with the arrangement. Perhaps her dear Clement did not confide to her his private reasons for so hasty a return, and I am not sure that she was not quite as well satisfied with his absence, which might have possibly spoiled her own particular sport--or interfered with it at least. So he went away with a certain impetus and haste upon him--his romance come to an effectual end, and his sensations somewhat bitter. He was not lackadaisical, but savage, as men are under their mortifications when they are no longer in their first youth. I daresay, if one could have read his thoughts, there were ferocious denunciations there against the women who beguile a man to commit himself so fatally, which would have been very unjust to poor Alice. I am afraid it is very cold-hearted of me to speak so lightly of a serious disappointment, which this certainly was to Mr. Reredos. I have no doubt he was really unhappy; but I thought it a good symptom that the unhappiness took a savage turn.