Mr. Hastings did not contest the point. He was so very practical a man (in contradistinction to an imaginative one) that he saw little use in "last" interviews, unless they produced actual good. Turning away, he walked home at a brisk pace. Maria was alone when he entered. Mrs. Hastings and Grace were out of the room, talking to some late applicant: a clergyman's house, like a parish apothecary's, is never free long together. Divested of her travelling cloaks and seated before the fire in her quiet merino dress, Maria looked as much at home as if she had never left it. The blaze, flickering on her face, betrayed to the keen glance of the Rector that her eyelashes were wet. "Grieving after Broomhead already, Maria?" asked he, his tone a stern one. "Oh, papa, no! I am glad to be at home. I was thinking of poor Ethel." "She is better off. The time may come, Maria--we none of us know what is before us--when some of you young ones who are left may wish you had died as she has. Many a one, battling for very existence with the world's cares, wails out a vain wish that he had been taken early from the evil to come." "It must be so dreadful for Thomas Godolphin!" Maria resumed, looking straight into the fire, and speaking as if in commune with herself, more than to her father. "Thomas Godolphin must find another love." It was one of those phrases, spoken in satire only, to which the Rector of All Souls' was occasionally given. He saw so much to condemn in the world, things which grated harshly on his advanced mind, that his speech had become imbued with a touch of gall, and he would often give utterance to cynical remarks, uncalled for at the moment. Maria took up the words literally. She turned to Mr. Hastings; her cheek flushed, her hands clasped; altogether betraying vivid emotion. "Oh, papa! another love! You should not say it of Thomas Godolphin. Love, such as his, is not for a week or a year: it is for all time." The Rector paused a moment in his reply. His penetrating gaze was fixed upon his daughter. "May I inquire whence you have derived your knowledge of 'love,' Miss Maria Hastings?" Her eyes drooped, her face turned crimson, her manner grew confused. She turned her countenance from that of her father, and stammered forth some lame excuse. "Every one knows, papa, that Thomas Godolphin was fond of Ethel." "Possibly. But every one does not know that Maria Hastings deems herself qualified to enlarge upon the subject," was the Rector's reply. And Maria shrank into silence.