"Indeed! I thought he had inspired you with an actual friendship for him: though I must confess, for my own part, I never met a more commonplace person. My maid, who is an intolerable gossip, tells me that Mrs. Gilbert has been suddenly seized with a religions mania, and attends all the services at Hurstonleigh. The Midlandshire people seem to have gone mad about that Mr. Colborne. I went to hear him last Sunday myself, and was very much pleased. I saw Mr. Gilbert's wife sitting in a pew near the pulpit, with her great unmeaning eyes fixed upon the curate's face all through the sermon. She is just the sort of person to fall in love with a popular preacher." Mr. Lansdell's face flushed a vivid scarlet, and then grew pale. "With her great unmeaning eyes fixed upon the curate's face." Those wondrous eyes that had so often looked up at him, mutely eloquent, tenderly pensive. Oh, had he been fooled by his own vanity? was this woman a sentimental coquette, ready to fall in love with any man who came across her path, learned in stereotyped schoolgirl phrases about platonic affection? Lady Gwendoline's shaft went straight home to his heart. He tried to talk about a few commonplace subjects with a miserable assumption of carelessness; and then, looking suddenly up at the clock on the chimney-piece, made a profuse apology for the length of his visit, and hurried away. It was four o'clock when he left the gates of Lowlands, and the next day was Sunday. "I will see for myself," he muttered, as he walked along a narrow lane, slashing the low hedge-rows with his stick as he went; "I will see for myself to-morrow." CHAPTER XXVIII. TRYING TO BE GOOD.