If poor Alice had not had that miserable habit of blushing, the reverend gentleman would have perceived nothing beyond the simple fact that the young lady was walking in a garden with Mr. Philip Stanburne. But Alice's face was suffused with crimson, and the knowledge that it was so made her so uncomfortable that she blushed more than ever. In spite of his manhood, there was a slightly heightened color on Philip's cheek also, but a good deal of this may be attributed to vexation at what he was disposed to consider an ill-timed and unwarrantable intrusion. "Good morning, Miss Alice! I hope you are quite well: and you, sir, I wish you good morning; I hope I see you well." Philip bowed, a little stiffly, and Alice proceeded to make hasty inquiries about her papa. Did Mr. Blunting know if her papa had changed his intentions? Mr. Blunting was always very polite, the defect in his manners (betraying that he was not quite a gentleman) being that they were only too deferential. He had a fatherly affection for Alice Stedman, whose spiritual guide he had been from her infancy, and it was certainly the very first time in her life that she had seen him without feelings of unmingled satisfaction. "I have come to fetch you myself, Miss Alice. I met your papa in Sootythorn this morning as I was leaving in my gig, and he asked if I were coming to Whittlecup. So he requested me to offer you the vacant seat, Miss Alice, which I now do with great pleasure." Here Mr. Blunting made a sort of a bow. There was an unctuousness in his courtesy that irritated Philip, but perhaps Philip envied him his place in the gig. "Are we going to leave immediately, then?" inquired Miss Stedman, in a tone which did not imply the most perfect satisfaction with these arrangements. "Mrs. Anison has been so kind as to invite me to dine, and I have accepted." Mr. Blunting was too honest to say that Miss Alice ought to dine before her drive. He accepted avowedly in his own interest. He had a large body to nourish, he had to supply energies for an enormous amount of work, and the dinners at the Sootythorn parsonage were not always very succulent. He therefore thought it not wrong to accept effective aid in his labors when it offered itself in the shape of hospitality. At dessert the clergyman found an opportunity of conveying, not too directly, a little hint or lesson which he felt it his duty to convey, and which had been tormenting him since the meeting in the garden. The conversation, which at Whittlecup, as elsewhere, very generally ran upon people known to the speakers, had turned to a case of separation between a neighboring country gentleman and his wife, who were, or had been, of different religions. "Marriages of that kind," said Mr. Blunting, "between people of different religions, seldom turn out happily, and it is a great imprudence to contract them."