Martha laughed comfortably. "If you aren't careful, she'll 'ave you up for breach of promise," she said. "She'd lose the day," the chauffeur answered confidently. "A jury would only 'ave to look at 'er to know no man would 'ave 'ad the pluck to 'ave done it." Martha laughed again. "That gipsy woman got a shilling out of 'er," she remarked, "for telling 'er she was going to marry a gentleman. She believes it, silly thing!" "She's as likely to marry a gentleman as anyone," the chauffeur answered. "Marriages are made in heaven, I've heard; and that's where Lizer'll 'ave to go to find 'er man. But the governor didn't ought to play with 'er young and untried affections. Givin' 'er presents like that." Martha rose deliberately, pushing back her chair. She had been in John Musgrave's service for over twenty years, and therefore spoke as one having authority. "'E give 'em to 'er most likely to throw in the ashbin," she said. "A silly like Lizer would believe anything." Nevertheless Martha was not happy in her mind in regard to that basket of hot-house produce. She experienced a strong curiosity to learn where it had come from, and why it had been sent, and rejected by the recipient. Only a rooted objection to question Eliza on intimate family matters restrained her curiosity sufficiently to prevent her from discussing the subject with her fellow-servant. Martha, as the back-stairs custodian of the family honour, could not permit herself to gossip with the housemaid about John Musgrave's affairs. CHAPTER TWO. The Rev Walter Errol stood in the vestry doorway and watched, as he had watched for many years, his departing congregation. It was a large congregation, disproportionately large, considering the size of the parish. It was drawn mainly from the neighbouring parish of Rushleigh, which was a big town compared with Moresby. But the incumbent of Moresby was an eloquent preacher, and the Rushleigh inhabitants found that the two-mile walk across the fields was well repaid in the satisfaction of hearing the message they desired to hear presented to them in a manner which was interesting as well as instructive, and more effective on this account. A message, whether beautiful or the reverse, has a greater hold on the imagination when effectively presented. The flock of the Rev Walter Errol never went away empty. There was always something in what he said to appeal to each individual member of the congregation, and so much that was novel and enlightened in his discourse that the thinker and the scholar found food for speculation, as well as the careless youth of the parish, who wandered into the church as a matter of course or from curiosity, and returned again and again because what they heard there was bright and stimulating and arresting, and gave them a sense of their own importance and responsibility in life, as well as a more beautiful conception of life itself.