He stayed all through the summer months, and when the autumn came he showed no signs of going. The widow grew more and more interested in him, and they often--he being a lonely man and she a lonely woman, and both unconsciously aware of it--had an hour's talk together; but it was a long time before it was other than rather awkward and even formal talk. Sometimes as he passed through the house to his own rooms he stopped to notice Hannah; but she was always ill at ease with him, and hurried away as fast as possible. He heard her speaking to Towsey sometimes, and occasionally even to her mother, in a way that made him call her "a spiteful little cat" to himself; but it was no concern of his; there was nothing of the cat about the mother, and that was the main thing. Mrs. Barton was surprised at first that her lodger did not go to church on Sundays, and the neighbors were curious about it, which embarrassed her; but she felt that it was no business of hers, and that, since Mr. Vincent was evidently above them in position and learning, it did not become them to make remarks. Besides, as Towsey was always busy in the kitchen at the back, it was comfortable to remember, while she herself was in church on Sunday mornings, that some one was left in the house who might be called a protection to it; for tramps had been known to come so far, and even such a thing as a fire might happen. So when she departed in her alpaca gown with crape trimmings, her widow's cap inside her bonnet, and her prayer-book and black-edged handkerchief (she had six of a goodly size and serviceable thickness) in her hand, across the fields with Hannah by the short cut to the church, it was with a sense of calm contentment. Mr. Vincent used to stand in the porch and watch them start; then, filling his pipe, he smoked in peace, and revelled in the extra quiet of the Sabbath day. The incumbent of St. Martha's, a man of no particular attainments, who had slipped into orders through the back door of a minor theological college, had thought of calling on the stranger and tackling him about his soul, till he heard incidentally that one of the writers of _Essays and Reviews_, who had been staying at Guildford, had driven over to Woodside Farm. Then he came to the conclusion that he might possibly get worsted in argument, and it would be the better part of valor to leave his doubtful parishioner in peace, even though it ended in perdition. II