Then if she had let it alone for the present, if she had allowed him to say what was on his lips, and had answered what was on hers, and had become his, and had pledged herself to him--why, then one time or other she must have spoken, not as now in the general, but plainly of Jim? And what if the righteous young man’s high disapproval and disgust with the unrighteous had gone even further, to the length of putting poor Jim, whom his sister loved, out of the charities of life altogether and casting him off as some good people do? Florence felt that no tie, not even marriage itself, would have made her bear that, and so concluded at last, mournfully, that what she had done was, perhaps, after all the best, so as to warn him off in time, and show him that her views were very different from his. Oh, what mistakes men can make even when they are the most highly instructed, the most high-minded and nobly purposed of their kind! Edward Osborne was all that; yet he thought that it was a more pious thing to make poor old Mrs. Lloyd and such harmless old bodies give up their little harmless indulgences than to risk a little trouble or company that, perhaps, might be distasteful to him, in order to save Jim. Florence got home at last just in time for the family luncheon, which was a good thing for her, as it kept her from exposure to the close personal observation of her mother and sister, who were too well acquainted with every change of her countenance not to perceive at once when anything was wrong with Florry. But the family meal occupied Mrs. Plowden, and Emmy was fortunately so full of her own morning’s occupations that her sister escaped notice. ‘You are not eating anything, child, and you have no colour,’ her mother said, ‘after your long walk.’ ‘It is the long walk that has done it, she has over-tired herself; you shouldn’t permit those long walks,’ said the Rector. This was his favourite way of treating any annoyance--with that consolatory conviction that it must be his wife’s fault, which supports many men through the smaller miseries of life. Mrs. Plowden took an equal pleasure in the pleas of self-defence. ‘How am I to prevent long walks when there is always so much to do in the parish?’ she said. ‘I am constantly telling you you should have more district visitors, or a mission woman, or something. Those girls have never a moment to themselves.’ ‘Oh, it is nothing, mamma,’ said Florence. ‘I had to make a long round to get the parish nurse: for I went to Mrs. Gould’s to find her, and, of course, she wasn’t there.’ ‘You ought to have known that, Florry, so it is your own fault. Why, you sent her off yourself to the little Heaths.’ ‘I know, mamma: I can’t think how I could be so stupid,’ Florence said. ‘And who wants her now?’ said the Rector curtly.