"I had not got so far as that," he said, rising. "You must remember, Angela, that you see a possible wife for me in every woman I exchange a word with. It is very flattering that you should think so many might be prevailed on to share my little Vicarage, but the Church only allows me one wife, and the selection I believe rests with me." "I know that. It's so silly to talk as if I expected anything different." "All I can say is that if I could delude myself into believing that Miss Georges put on that hat or any other hat with a view to attracting me, I should feel some alacrity in finishing my Sunday sermon, which I must now do without any alacrity at all." Miss Black swallowed the remains of her plasmon biscuit, and said in the voice of one accustomed to the last word-- "Miss Georges is very good-looking, of course. No one admires that sort of pale, clear complexion and calm manner more than I do. But you must remember that they are merely the result of a constitution free from an excess of uric acid. Non-gouty subjects always look like that." CHAPTER XXII "Give me the sweet cup wrought of the earth from which I was born, and under which I shall lie dead."--ZONAS. From the church tower, Reader, you can see beyond the mill and the long water meadows the little hamlet of Swale. That old house in the midst, with its wonderful twisted chimneys and broken wall, was once the home of the extinct Welyshams of Swale. But the name of Welysham, embedded in the history of Lowshire and still renowned in India, is forgotten in Riff. Their old house, fast falling into ruins, is now used as a farm, until Roger can get leave to restore it, or pull it down. The sky looks in at the upper rooms. No one dare go up the wide oak staircase, and Mrs. Nicholls' chickens roost on the carved balustrade of the minstrels' gallery. We will go there next. Mrs. Nicholls, the devoted nurse of all the Manvers family and the principal treble in the choir, had married at a portly age the tenant-farmer at Swale, and Annette was having tea with her on this particular afternoon, and hearing a full description, which scorned all omissions, of the last illness of Mr. Nicholls, who had not been able "to take a bite in his head" of anything solid for many weeks before his death. "And so, miss," said Mrs. Nicholls philosophically, "when he went I felt it was all for the best. It's a poor thing for a man to live by suction." Annette agreed. "Swale seems quite empty this afternoon," she said, possibly not unwilling to change the subject. "There is hardly a soul to be seen." "I expect they've all gone to Sir Harry's 'lection tea," said Mrs. Nicholls. "I used to go while Nicholls was alive, and very convenient it was; but Sir Harry don't want no widders nor single spinsters--only wives of them as has votes."