“I am not superstitious--it is to avert superstition;” she said quickly, with an idea that she was giving a reason. “But I don’t like a conversation that is all occupied with what will happen when papa is----, or that discusses my brother as if--You may think me fanciful if you please, but I do not like it. I should not talk about Uncle Anthony’s--to you.” She would not say the words death or dying, but left them to the imagination. “You may say whatever you please to me,” said the Rector softly, with a smile, and so far as concerned _his_ father’s death anyone might have discussed it. General Curtis had not much to leave, it was not his end that would work any great change one way or other in the world. His sons would receive their pittance, and there would be no more about it. She might talk of it as long as she pleased, and the Rector’s feelings would not be much affected. But this was not the impression that Hubert Curtis wished to produce upon his cousin. He meant to say _you_ may say what you please--_you_ are privileged, there is nothing that I would not accept from _you_. But by this time they had reached the end of the avenue. The Rectory was the nearest house. It was a very handsome red-brick house, not older than the days of Queen Anne, standing only a little way off the road, half concealed in its shrubberies, well-kept, graceful, and comfortable. The pediment of the front showed over the lower growth of trees, and was sheltered and embosomed in the loftier ones. A noble old cedar stretching its long level arms across the road stood close by the gate. All kinds of fine flowering shrubs were in clumps in front of the house: some shining in dark evergreen, and some rapidly dropping their many-coloured leaves. There was something in the shape of sculpture adorning the pediment, and the Oakley tigers ramped on the posts of the gate; while behind stretched a large enclosure, full, apparently, of fine trees. It was as good as many a squire’s house in the country, one of the very finest specimens extant of an English Rectory. At a distance of about a quarter of a mile lay the village, such a spruce and trim place as villages are which live in kindly neighbourship with a rich Lord of the Manor and a fastidious Rector--their gardens, their windows, everything was in good order. There were flowers even now, chrysanthemums and dahlias, and some pale monthly roses. The end nearest the Hall and the Rectory was a sort of square built on three sides. The houses were old, with high-pitched roofs, covered with those soft brown-red tiles upon which lichens grow, and nothing could be more picturesque. A row of little old almshouses, older than either Rectory or Hall, was on one side, on the other was the Exchange, the Regent Street of Oakley. Here stood the inn, a rustic country inn with a sign on a post in front of it, and the post-office, with Berlin wool patterns in its little projecting window, and the shop in which you could buy everything.