“Perhaps he has turned over a new leaf,” said Ralph, looking up from the discoloured track where they were walking to the pure white fields beyond. Myra Kay gave a sarcastic little laugh. “You are far too innocent, Mr. Denmead,” she said; and Ralph thought there was an unpleasant touch of patronage in her tone. “Does he look as if he were repenting?” “Men can’t go about in sackcloth and ashes,” said Ralph; “and you surely wouldn’t have him cultivate a face a yard long? It’s his nature to be full of fun, and, for my part, I would far rather have to do with a man who has been openly punished than with a hypocrite who sins with impunity and goes about posing as a philanthropist.” He thought resentfully of Sir Matthew. “I can’t think how you can speak to him,” said Myra Kay bitterly, “For your own sake, and for the sake of the profession, you ought to have nothing to do with him. It was not just a common case of wrongdoing--it was a specially atrocious affair throughout. They say you are the son of a clergyman. I should have thought you would have had better judgment than to mix yourself up with such a man.” “He is precisely the sort of man my father would have befriended,” said Ralph, warmly. “There was nothing of the Pharisee about him. I remember how when all the village cut a man who had been in prison for some bad offence, he found out the fellow’s one vulnerable point--a love of flowers--and had him up with us at the Rectory the whole of one Bank-holiday, pottering about the garden and greenhouse, and as happy as a king in exchanging plants with us, and helping to bud roses.” “That may be well enough for a clergyman, but for you--a mere boy, knowing so little of the world--it is different. You ought not to have chosen such a man as your companion.” “I didn’t choose him,” said Ralph, with some warmth. “An ‘unco guid’ widow shut the door in my face, because I was an actor, and said she only took in Christians. Then at the next place I went to they gave me shelter and kind words, and Dudley was goodness itself to me. If I cut him now I should be a contemptible cad.” “Well,” said his companion, with a shrug of her shoulders, “you must ‘gang your own gait.’ But remember that I have warned you.” She turned back soon after this, and Ivy, who had thought the whole discussion very tiresome, skipped for joy when a bend in the road hid her from view. But Ralph seemed unusually silent, and as they looked at the ruins of the old abbey, Ivy could not at all understand the shadow that seemed to have come over his face. Not a word ever passed Dudley’s lips about his previous life, but there were not lacking people who promptly told him that Ralph Denmead had just learnt all about it; and when they moved on to Ayr, he said in his blunt way: “You’ll not care that we should pig together any longer, I daresay?”