But Jack was so far from being a detective that he had already dismissed the suspicions he had at first entertained. “I think not, thank you,” he answered; “I will call again.” “Can I give him any name?” Clode asked in despair. “Well, you might say Jack Smith called,” the barrister answered, “if you will be so kind.” They parted at the door, and Clode went back into the house, where he speedily learned all that Mrs. Baker knew of Mr. Smith. It dispelled his first fear. The man was not a detective; still it sent him home gloomy and ill at ease. What if so intimate a friend of the rector’s as this Smith seemed to be should tell him of his curate’s visit to the cupboard and the excuse which on the spur of the moment he had invented? It might go ill with him then. What explanation could he give? He tried to consider such a mishap impossible, or at all events unlikely; but not with complete success. More than ever he wished that he had not interfered with the letters. To return to Jack. Such mild festivities as the bazaar were not uncommon in Claversham, but the Bonamy household at any rate had not been wont to look forward to them with anything approaching exhilaration. It is wonderful how some children growing up in any kind of social shadow learn the fact; and Daintry Bonamy, scarcely less than her sister, had come to regard the annual flower-show, the school sports, and the regatta with distaste and repugnance, as occasions of little pleasure and much humiliation. It was Mr. Bonamy’s will, however, that they should attend, though he never went himself; and times innumerable they had done so, outwardly in pretty dresses and becoming hats, inwardly in sack-cloth and ashes. Jack’s presence changed all this, and for once the girls went up to dress quite gaily. If Kate reflected that Jack’s intimacy with the rector would be likely to bring them also into contact with him, she said nothing; and from Jack—for the present at least—it was mercifully hidden that, with all his kindness, his unfailing good-humor, his wit, his devotion to her, his chief attraction in the girl’s eyes lay in the fact that he was another man’s friend.