“Eh?” said a voice behind them as they entered the porch—the speaker was Gregg. “What do you think of that, Bonamy? A gay young spark, is he not?” There was time for no more then. But as the congregation waited in their seats through a long voluntary, many were the nods and winks, and incessant the low mutterings, as one communicated to another the details of the scene outside, and his or her view of them. When the rector appeared—nine minutes late by Mr. Bonamy’s watch—he looked pale and fagged, and the sermon he preached was of the shortest. Nine-tenths of the congregation noted only the brevity of the discourse and drew their conclusions. But Kate Bonamy, who sat by her father with downcast eyes and a tinge of color still in her cheeks, and who scarcely once looked up at the weary face and tumbled hair, fancied, heaven knows why, that she detected a new pathos and a deeper tone of appeal in the few simple sentences; and though she had scarcely spoken to the rector for a month, and was nursing a tiny contempt for him, the girl felt on a sudden more kindly disposed toward the young man. Not so Mr. Bonamy, He came out of church chuckling; full of a grim delight in the fulfilment of his predictions. It was not his custom to linger in the porch, for he was not a sociable man; but he did so to-day, and, letting Kate and Daintry go on, formed one of a coterie of men, who had no difficulty in coming to a conclusion about the rector. “He has been studying hard, poor fellow!” said Gregg, with a wink—there is no dislike so mean and cruel as that which the ill-bred man feels for the gentleman—“reading the devil’s books all night!” “Nine minutes late!” said the lawyer. “That is what comes of having a young fellow who is always gadding about the country!” “He could not gad to a more congenial place than Holberton, I should think,” sneered a third. And then all the sins which the Homfrays had ever committed, and all those which had ever been laid to their charge, were cited to render the rector’s case more black. To do him justice, Mr. Bonamy took but a listener’s part in this. He was a shrewd man, and he did not believe that the rector could have had anything to do with an elopement from Holberton which had taken place before his name was heard in the county; but he was honestly assured that the young fellow had been sitting over the cards half the night. And as for the other crimes, perhaps he would commit them if he were left to follow his own foolish devices. “What is ill-gotten soon goes,” said one charitable person with a sneer. “You may depend upon it that what we hear is true.” “It is all of a piece,” said another. “A man does not have a follower of that kind for nothing?”