And yet it was very difficult to discover what exactly it was that he had done! Now, whatever it might be that went wrong in the Brandon house, in the Cathedral, in the town, her father was certain that Ronder was responsible,--but proof. Well, there wasn't any. And it was precisely this absence of proof that built up the obsession. Everywhere that Ronder went he spoke enthusiastically about the Archdeacon. These compliments came back to Joan again and again. "If there's one man in this town I admire----" "What would this town be without----" "We're lucky, indeed, to have the Archdeacon----" And yet was there not behind all these things a laugh, a jest, a mocking tone, something that belonged in spirit to that horrible day when the elephant had trodden upon her father's hat? She loved her father, and she loved him twice as dearly since one night when on driving up to the Castle he had held her hand. But now the obsession had killed the possibility of any tenderness between them; she longed to be able to do something that would show him how strongly she was his partisan, to insult Canon Ronder in the market-place, to turn her back when he spoke to her--and, at the same time, intermingled with this hot championship was irritation that her father should allow himself to be obsessed by this. He who was so far greater than a million Ronders! The situation in the Brandon family had not been made any easier by Falk's strange liking for the man. Joan did not pretend that she understood her brother or had ever been in any way close to him. When she had been little he had seemed to be so infinitely above her as to be in another world, and now that they seemed almost of an age he was strange to her like some one of foreign blood. She knew that she did not count in his scheme of life at all, that he never thought of her nor wanted her. She did not mind that, and even now she would have been tranquil about him had it not been for her mother's anxiety. She could not but see how during the last weeks her mother had watched every step that Falk took, her eyes always searching his face as though he were keeping some secret from her. To Joan, who never believed that people could plot and plan and lead double lives, this all seemed unnatural and exaggerated. But she knew well enough that her mother had never attempted to give her any of her confidence. Everything at home, in short, was difficult and confused. Nobody was happy, nobody was natural. Even her own private history, if she looked into it too closely, did not show her any very optimistic colours. She had not seen Johnny St. Leath now for a fortnight, nor heard from him, and those precious words under the Arden Gate one evening were beginning already to appear a dim unsubstantial dream. However, if there was one quality that Joan Brandon possessed in excess of all others, it was a simple fidelity to the cause or person in front of her.