"Did you ever hear anything so rude?" said the beauty, turning graciously to the young minister. "You call me a great lady, and all sorts of things, Rachel; but I never could be as rude as you are, and as you always were as long as I remember." "My dear, the height of good-breeding is to be perfectly ill-bred when one pleases," said Mrs. Hilyard, taking her work upon her knee and putting on her thimble: "but though you are wonderfully pretty, you never had the makings of a thorough fine lady in you. You can't help trying to please everybody--which, indeed, if there were no women in the world," added that sharp observer, with a sudden glance at Vincent, who saw the thin lines again move about her mouth, "you might easily do without giving yourself much trouble. Mr. Vincent, if this lady won't leave us, might I trouble you to talk? For two strains of thought, carried on at the same moment, now that I'm out of society, are too exhausting for me." With which speech she gravely pinned her work to her knee, threaded her needle with a long thread of blue cotton, and began her work with the utmost composure, leaving her two visitors in the awkward _tête-à-tête_ position which the presence of a third person, entirely absorbed in her own employment, with eyes and face abstracted, naturally produces. Never in his life had Vincent been so anxious to appear to advantage--never had he been so totally deprived of the use of his faculties. His eager looks, his changing colour, perhaps interceded for him with the beautiful stranger, who was not ignorant of those signs of subjugation which she saw so often. "I think it was you that were so good as to clear the way for me the last time I was here," she said, with the sweetest grace, raising those lovely eyes, which put even Tozer beside himself, to the unfortunate pastor's face. "I remember fancying you must be a stranger here, as I had not seen you anywhere in society. Those wonderful little wretches never seem to come to any harm. They always appear to me to be scrambling among the horses' feet. Fancy, Rachel, one of those boys who flourish in the back streets, with such rags--oh, such rags!--you could not possibly _make_ them, if you were to try, with scissors--such perfection must come of itself;--had just pushed in before me, and I don't know what I should have done, if Mr. ---- (I beg your pardon)--if _you_ had not cleared the way."