Curtis should be here with a young man without the knowledge of her father and mother; and Durant, Durant, who had his living to make like any common man! She remembered very well what Arthur had told her about him. He, it was clear, could be no match for Lucy; it was not right, it was not _nice_ of Lucy. The forehead of Mrs. Arthur contracted. She did not like any coming down in the family with which she was connected. She liked to think of them all as very great people indeed, quite above that necessity of working for a living which brought down Durant to the ordinary level of man. All this, however, was by the way; and the immediate thing she had to consider was what she herself would do in this new emergency. She ended hastily at last, when the pair of lovers (since they could be nothing else) turned their faces towards the Hall. Nancy seized her sister’s arm, and without saying anything rushed hastily towards the stile. They got over it, and out of the gates, while still the backs of the others were turned; and then for the moment the two young women ventured to take breath and feel themselves safe. “They were going up towards the house,” said Nancy; “we have no need to hurry.” But she gave looks of alarm behind her, and walked rapidly back to the cottage. As ill luck would have it they met the Rector, who stopped, as he always did, and kept them talking. When he had insisted on planting himself in their path for a full minute, Nancy got desperate. He was to be got rid of, she felt, at all hazards. “We met Miss Curtis in the avenue just now,” she said. “She had a gentleman with her. Do you know if there is a gentleman of the name of Durant, or something like that, visiting at the Hall?” “Oh, Durant is there, is he?” said the Rector, with a look of annoyance. “Yes, I know him. He used to be very intimate then; but I had hoped he had not been so much in favour of late. I say frankly, ‘I hope,’ for I am not fond of him. He is a nobody, a--perhaps you have met him, Mrs. Arthur. He has got into very good society, somehow or other; but he is nobody.”