"I don't wish to go into them either," she said. "I didn't press you to take me into your confidence then, and I won't do it now. But I think you ought to tell me what has been the trouble with the Graftons. You have criticised them from time to time, as you criticise everybody,"--he frowned at this sentence, which was unlike any she had ever used to him--"but we have been on friendly terms with them for over a year. At first we were on _very_ friendly terms with them, and you used to go to the Abbey in just the same way as you used to run in and out of Stone Cottage. They have always been as nice as possible to me, but I couldn't help seeing that they were not as friendly towards you as they had been. When you left off going there in the intimate way you did at first, they still asked us to the house fairly often. But this invitation to dinner to-night is the first we have had from them for weeks." He did not usually allow her to speak at this length without interrupting her, but when you are brought to book about anything it is as well to know exactly what you have to meet. It may not after all be so difficult to meet it as you had anticipated. It was with something like his customary tone that he said: "We have often discussed the Graftons together, and you know well enough that there are many things about them which I, as a priest of the Church, cannot approve of. If there has been any decline of intimacy between us it is for that reason and that reason alone. They are not what I thought they were when they first came here, and though in the position in which I stand towards them I must do my best to keep the peace for the good of the parish, I shall not surrender one jot or tittle of what I stand for here, for the sake of keeping in with the rich man of the parish." It sounded very well to him, but she rather spoilt it by asking in a quiet voice: "What do you stand for here, Albert?" Whether or not the necessity of explaining to her the whole gist and meaning of the Ordination Service withheld him from replying to her at once, she had time to go on before he spoke.