‘Father,’ said Charley with unusual energy, ‘it seems to me that the most unbearable point of all this is--that you and I should venture to talk of any fellow, confound him! keeping his word and behaving honourably to---- That’s what I can’t put up with, for my part.’ ‘You are quite right,’ said the Rector, abashed for the moment. And then he added, pettishly, ‘but what can we do? We must use the common words, even though Anne is the subject. Charley, there is nobody so near a brother to her as you are, nor a father as I.’ ‘Yes, I suppose I’m like a brother,’ the Curate said with a sigh. ‘Then tell me exactly what this fellow said.’ Mr. Ashley was wound up for immediate action. Perhaps the increased tedium of life since the departure of ‘the family’ from Mount had made him more willing, now when it seemed to have come to a climax, for an excitement of any kind. ‘It isn’t what she has a right to,’ said the Curate, painfully impartial when he had told his tale. ‘She--ought to be received like a blessing wherever she goes. We know that better than anyone: but I don’t say that Douglas doesn’t know it too----’ ‘Don’t let me hear the fellow’s name!’ ‘That’s very true, sir,’ said the Curate; ‘but, after all, when you come to think of it! Perhaps, now-a-days, with all our artificial arrangements, you know---- At least, that’s what people say. He’d be bringing her to poverty to please himself. He’d be taking her out of her own sphere. She doesn’t know what poverty means, that’s what he says--and she laughs at it. How can he bring her into trouble which she doesn’t understand--that’s what he says.’ ‘He’s a fool, and a coward, and an idiot, and perhaps a knave, for anything I can tell!’ cried the Rector in distinct volleys. Then he cried sharply with staccato distinctness, ‘I shall go to town to-night.’ ‘To town! to-night? I don’t see what _you_ could do, sir!’ said the Curate, slightly wounded, with an injured emphasis on the pronoun, as much as to say, if _I_ could not do anything, how should you? But the Rector shook off this protest with a gesture of impatience, and went away, leaving no further ground for remonstrance. It was a great surprise to the village generally to hear that he was going away. Willie Ashley heard of it before he could get back from Hunston; and Heathcote Mountford in the depths of the library which, the only part of the house he had interfered with, he was now busy transforming. ‘The Rector is going to London!’ ‘It has something to do with Anne and her affairs, take my word for it!’ cried Fanny Woodhead, who was so clear-sighted, ‘and high time that somebody should interfere!’