Mr. Belden would hardly have been willing that Diana should know how great this intimacy had become. She was not likely to hear the scandals of the Millard; and it is not to be denied that the intimacy soon became one of the most delectable of the said scandals. Julia Wilkes and Milly Center talked it over and knew quite too much about it. Mrs. Aquiline remembered that she was _née_ Retroussée, and with a subdued delight kept the rector of St. Gingulphus fully informed. Rev. Theo. Logge, who was by this time well into the Lee Scuppernong, smacked his lips over the flirtation and hoped to Mrs. Grognon that there was nothing wrong. “A foo paw,” he said, “would bring terrible disgrace upon the congregation of St. Aspasia.” And then Logge indited two letters to the _Preserver_. The religious letter bewailed the immorality of the fashionable world, in the pious style of generalisation, and referred to the “dreadful developments in the communication of our secular correspondent, Phylac Terry.” Phylac did not develop anything; he confined himself to liquorish innuendos. Whenever Mrs. Budlong was out with her _étalage_ in the parlours, Mr. Belden might have been seen hanging over and inspecting it. There was no hour when they were not together. Belden’s bolter came into play for buggy drives at solitary hours, and though he was willing to conceal the qualities of that singed cat, Knockknees, he rode him cautiously by her side on the beach. The sun went down, dimmer grew the horizon where it met the sea, dusk and dim and far-away, falling upon the boundlessness of sea. With the glow and the glory of sunset, gay files of carriages had left the beach, struggled over the stones, and climbed the dusty hill. But Mr. Belden and his companion lingered. She was saying little and sometimes hardly listening, thinking perhaps of girlish escapades on horseback, stampedes upon a bareback pony over meadow or among the pumpkin piles of her father’s orchard long ago,--ah! how long it seemed!--when she was simpler and possibly purer than now. Purer? Ah! this seemed a thought she was willing to dismiss, and Drummer suffered for her wish to fly from it. He tore madly on through the dim twilight, she looking back almost fearfully. When that gallop was over, she was again ready to devote herself to her cavalier, letting him bend over the saddle and rearrange her dress. Peter Skerrett did not like this at all and spoke to Mr. Budlong, who came and went every week. Old Bud told him that since his wife had frankly given up the Frenchman, she should have her own way. He trusted her fully, he said--good soul! Peter had no right to interfere. Mr. Waddy had no right. No one had. No one ever has. Women and men go on ruining themselves, and the world winks and lets them. Nor had Peter any right to interfere in Miss Arabella’s flirtation with De Châteaunéant. He therefore kept away and the flirtation intensified. Mrs. Budlong patronised it.