"Mr. Blackthorne," said Mrs. Courtenay, "would you take Mrs. Milton-Cleave to have an ice?" Now Mrs. Milton-Cleave had always been one of the curate's great friends. She was a very pleasant, talkative woman of six-and-thirty, and a general favourite. Her popularity was well deserved, for she was always ready to do a kind action, and often went out of her way to help people who had not the slightest claim upon her. There was, however, no repose about Mrs. Milton-Cleave, and an acute observer would have discovered that her universal readiness to help was caused to some extent by her good heart, but in a very large degree by her restless and over-active brain. Her sphere was scarcely large enough for her, she would have made an excellent head of an orphan asylum or manager of some large institution, but her quiet country life offered far too narrow a field for her energy. "It is really quite a treat to watch Mr. Zaluski's play," she remarked as they walked to the refreshment tent at the other end of the lawn. "Certainly foreigners know how to move much better than we do: our best players look awkward beside them." "Do you think so?" said Mr. Blackthorne. "I am afraid I am full of prejudice, and consider that no one can equal a true-born Briton." "And I quite agree with you in the main," said Mrs. Milton-Cleave. "Though I confess that it is rather refreshing to have a little variety." The curate was silent, but his silence merely covered his absorption in me, and I began to exercise a faint influence through his mind on the mind of his companion. This caused her at length to say: "I don't think you quite like Mr. Zaluski. Do you know much about him?" "I have met him several times this summer," said the curate, in the tone of one who could have said much more if he would. The less satisfying his replies, the more Mrs. Milton-Cleave's curiosity grew. "Now, tell me candidly," she said at length. "Is there not some mystery about our new neighbour? Is he quite what he seems to be?" "I fear he is not," said Mr. Blackthorne, making the admission in a tone of reluctance, though, to tell the truth, he had been longing to pass me on for the last five minutes. "You mean that he is fast?" "Worse than that," said James Blackthorne, lowering his voice as they walked down one of the shady garden paths. "He is a dangerous, unprincipled fellow, and into the bargain an avowed Nihilist. All that is involved in that word you perhaps scarcely realise." "Indeed I do," she exclaimed with a shocked expression. "I have just been reading a review of that book by Stepniak. Their social and religious views are terrible; free-love, atheism, everything that could bring ruin on the human race. Is he indeed a Nihilist?" Mr. Blackthorne's conscience gave him a sharp prick, for he knew that he ought not to have passed me on. He tried to pacify it with the excuse that he had only promised not to tell that Miss Houghton had been his informant.