Lindo saw, when he was a few paces from her and had raised his hat, that her face expressed much more emotion, if not embarrassment, than seemed to be called for by the occasion. And naturally this communicated itself to him. “I have not seen you for a long time,” he said, as he shook hands. Perhaps the worst thing he could have said under the circumstances. She assented, however. “No,” she said, sloping her umbrella behind her so as to keep off the wind and a half-frozen drizzle with which it was laden. And, as she did this, her eyes met his gallantly. “But I am glad, Mr. Lindo,” she continued, “that I have met you to-day, because I have something I want to say to you.” On the instant he vowed within himself that it would be in bad taste, in the worst taste, if she referred to the quarrel or to parish matters. And he answered very frigidly. “What is that, Miss Bonamy?” he said. “Pray speak on.” She detected the change of tone, and for a second her gray eyes flashed. But she had come to say something. She had counted the cost, and nothing he could do should prevent her saying it. She had been awake all night, torturing herself with imagining the things he would think of her. But she was not to be deterred by the reality. “Do you know, Mr. Lindo,” she said steadily, “what is being said of you in the town?” “A good many hard things.” he answered half lightly and half bitterly. “So I have reason to believe. But I do not think that they will affect me one way or the other, Miss Bonamy.” “And so,” she answered, with spirit, “you will not thank any one for telling you of them? That is what you mean, is it not?” He was very sore, and her interference annoyed him excessively—possibly because he valued her good opinion. He would not deny the feeling she imputed to him. “Possibly I do mean something of that kind,” he said. “Where ignorance is bliss—you know.” “Yet there is one thing,” she replied, “being said of you in the town, which I think you should be told, Mr. Lindo. Your friends probably will not hear it, or, if they do, they will not venture to tell you of it.” “Indeed,” he answered. “You pique my curiosity.” “It is being commonly said,” she rejoined, looking down for the first time, “that you have no right to the living, and were appointed by some mistake, or—or fraud.” He did not answer her at once. He was so completely taken by surprise that he stood looking at her with his mouth open. His first and better impulse was to laugh heartily. But what he did was to say in a very quiet way, “Indeed. That is being said, is it? It is quite true I had not heard it. May I ask, Miss Bonamy, if you had it from your father?” If his tone had been cold before, it was freezing now. But she was not to be daunted, and she answered with considerable presence of mind, “I heard from my father that that was the report in the town, but I also heard him express his disbelief in the greater part of it.”