Mr. Cobb was silent. He was a mild man, and he knew by much experience how unprofitable controversy with Mrs. Cobb was. He could not forget Mrs. Fairfax’s stooping figure when she was about to pick up the bill. She caused in all the Langborough males an unaccustomed quivering and warmth, the same in each, physical, perhaps, but salutary, for the monotony of life was relieved thereby and a deference and even a grace were begotten which did not usually distinguish Langborough manners. Not one of Mrs. Fairfax’s admirers, however, could say that she showed any desire for conversation with him, nor could any direct evidence be obtained as to what she thought of things in general. There was, to be sure, the French book, and there were other circumstances already mentioned from which suspicion or certainty (suspicion, as we have seen, passing immediately into certainty in Langborough) of infidelity or disreputable conduct followed, but no corroborating word from her could be adduced. She attended to her business, accepted orders with thanks and smiles, talked about the weather and the accident to the coach, was punctual in her attendance at church, calm and inscrutable as the Sphinx. The attendance at church was, of course, set down to “business considerations,” and was held to be quite consistent with the scepticism and loose morality deducible from the French book and the unground coffee. * * * * * In speaking of the male creatures of the town we have left out Dr. Midleton. He was forty-eight years old, and had been rector twenty years. He had obtained high mathematical honours at Cambridge, and became a tutor in a grammar school, but was soon presented by his college with the living of Langborough. He was tall, spare, clean-shaven, grey-eyed, dark-haired, thin-faced, his lips were curved and compressed, and he stooped slightly. He was a widower with no children, and the Rectory was efficiently kept in order by an aged housekeeper. Tractarianism had not arisen in 1839, but he was High Church and an enemy to all kinds of fanaticism, apt to be satirical, even in his sermons, on the right of private judgment to interpret texts as it pleased in ignorance of Hebrew and Greek. He was respected and feared more than any other man in the parish. He had a great library, and had taken up archæology as a hobby. He knew the history of every church in the county, and more about the Langborough records than was known by the town clerk. He was chairman of a Board of Governors charged with the administration of wealthy trust for alms and schools. When he first took office he found that this trust was controlled almost entirely by a man named Jackson, a local solicitor, whose salary as clerk was £400 a year and who had a large private practice. The alms were allotted to serve political purposes, and the headmaster of the school enjoyed a salary of £800 a year for teaching forty boys, of whom twenty were boarders. Mr.