“No? And I did not know you were going down to-day,” Jack answered, walking beside the train. “Let me introduce you to my cousins, Miss Bonamy and Daintry. I am sorry that I did not see you before. Good luck to you! Good-bye, Kate!” The train was moving faster and faster, and Jack was soon left behind on the platform gazing pathetically at the black tunnel which had swallowed it up. In the carriage there was silence, and in the heart of one at least of the passengers the most horrible vexation. Kate could have bitten out her tongue. She was conscious that the clergyman had bowed in acknowledgment of Jack’s introduction and had muttered something. But then he had sunk back in his corner, his face wearing, as it seemed to her, a frown of scornful annoyance. Even if nothing awkward had been said, she would still have shunned, for a certain reason, such a meeting as this with a new clergyman who did not yet know Claversham. But now she had aggravated the matter by her heedlessness. So she sat angry, and yet ashamed, with her lips pressed together and her eyes fixed upon the opposite cushion. For the Rev. Reginald, he had been by no means indifferent to the criticisms he had unfortunately overheard. Always possessed of a fairly good opinion of himself, he had lately been raising his standard to the rectorial height; and, being very human, he had come to think himself something of a personage. If Jack Smith had introduced him under the same circumstances to his aunt, there is no saying how far the acquaintance would have progressed or how long the new incumbent might have fretted and fumed. But presently he stole a look at Kate Bonamy and melted. He saw a girl, slightly above the middle height, graceful and rounded of figure, with a grave stateliness of carriage which oddly became her. Her complexion was rather pale, but it was clear and healthy, and there was even a freckle here and a freckle there which I never heard a man say that he would have had elsewhere. If her face was a trifle long, with a nose a little aquiline and curving lips too wide, yet it was a fair and dainty face, such as Englishmen love. The brown hair, which strayed on to the broad white brow and hung in a heavy loop upon her neck, had a natural waviness—the sole beauty on which she prided herself. For she could not see her eyes as others saw them—big gray eyes that from under long lashes looked out upon you, full of such purity and truth that men meeting their gaze straightway felt a desire to be better men and went away and tried—for half an hour. Such was Kate outwardly. Inwardly she had faults of course, and perhaps pride and a little temper were two of them.