"I wish I hadn't dinnered him as I have been doin'!" the woman broke out. "But he'll know the difference next week! And now, sir, I suppose you'll be goin' to that place again to-night?" Anne jerked her thumb behind her over her left shoulder. "Suppose so, Anne. Can't afford a night-nurse, and the wife won't look after him." "Why don't some one make her?" said Anne, frowning. The Rector's face changed. "Better not talk about it, Anne. When a woman's been in hell for years, you needn't expect her to come out an angel. She won't forgive him, and she won't nurse him--that's flat." "No reason why she should shovel him off on other people as wants their night's rest. It's takin' advantage--that's what it is." "I say, Anne, I must read my letters. And just light me a bit of fire, there's a good woman. July!--ugh!--it might be February!" In a few minutes a bit of fire was blazing in the grate, though the windows were still wide open, and the Rector, who had had a long journey that day to take a funeral for a friend, lay back in sybaritic ease, now sipping his tea and now cutting open letters and parcels. The letter signed "F. Marcoburg" in the corner had been placed, still unopened, on the mantelpiece now facing him. The Rector looked at it from time to time; it might have been said by a close observer that he never forgot it; but, all the same, he went on dipping into books and reviews, or puzzling--with muttered imprecations on the German tongue--over some of his letters. "By Jove! this apocalyptic Messianic business is getting interesting. Soon we shall know where all the Pauline ideas came from--every single one of them! And what matter? Who's the worse? Is it any less wonderful when we do know? The new wine found its bottles ready--that's all." As he sat there he had the aspect of a man enjoying apparently the comfort of his own fireside. Yet, now that the face was at rest, certain cavernous hollows under the eyes, and certain lines on the forehead and at the corners of the mouth, as though graven by some long fatigue, showed themselves disfiguringly. The personality, however, on which this fatigue had stamped itself was clearly one of remarkable vigour, physical and mental. A massive head covered with strong black hair, curly at the brows; eyes grayish-blue, small, with some shade of expression in them which made them arresting, commanding, even; a large nose and irregular mouth, the lips flexible and kind, the chin firm--one might have made some such catalogue of Meynell's characteristics; adding to them the strength of a broad-chested, loose-limbed frame, made rather, one would have thought, for country labours than for the vigils of the scholar. But the hands were those of a man of letters--bony and long-fingered, but refined, touching things with care and gentleness, like one accustomed to the small tools of the writer.