She had been there for some time when the sound of a footstep on the gravel outside made her start. It was followed by a knock at the door, which she herself opened almost before the summons. She came back to the room, immediately followed by a tall man in clerical dress. The suppressed excitement which had been in Mrs. Blencarrow’s aspect all the day had risen now to an extraordinary height. She was very pale, with one flaring spot on either cheek, and trembled so much that her teeth were with difficulty kept from chattering against each other. She was quite breathless when she took her seat again, once more supporting her head in her hands. The clergyman was embarrassed, too; he clasped and unclasped his hands nervously, and remarked that the night was very cloudy and that it was cold, as if, perhaps, it had been to give her information about the weather that he came. Mr. Germaine giving her his views about the night, and Mrs. Blencarrow listening with her face half hidden, made the most curious picture, surrounded as it was by the bare framework of this out-of-the-way room. She broke in abruptly at last upon the few broken bits of information which he proceeded to give. ‘Do you guess why I sent for you, Mr. Germaine?’ The Vicar hesitated, and said, ‘I am by no means sure.’ ‘Or why I receive you here in this strange place, and let you in myself, and treat you as if you were a visitor whom I did not choose to have seen?’ ‘I have never thought of that last case.’ ‘No--but it is true enough. It is not an ordinary visit I asked you to pay me.’ She took her hands from her face and looked at him for a moment. ‘You have heard what people are saying of me?’ she said. ‘Yes, but I did not believe a word. I felt sure that Kitty only meant to curry favour at home.’ She gave him a strange, sudden look, then paused with a mechanical laugh. ‘You think, then,’ she said, ‘that there are people in my own county to whom that news would be something to conciliate; something--something to make them forgive?’ ‘There are people everywhere who would give much for such a story against a neighbour, Mrs. Blencarrow.’ ‘It is sad that such a thing should be.’ She stopped again, and looked at him once more. ‘I am going to surprise you very much, Mr. Germaine. You are not like them, so I think I am going to give you a great shock,’ she said. She had turned her face towards him as she spoke; the two red spots on her cheeks were like fire, yet her paleness was extreme; they only seemed to make this the more remarkable.