High Church young clergyman who had wished to have candles in
his church, and of whom it was asserted that he did keep a pair of
candles on an inverted box in a closet inside his bedroom--"if I went
to Mr Paul's church, might his wife, if he had one, come and ask me
all manner of questions like that?"

Now Mr Paul's name stank in the nostrils of Mrs Stumfold. He was
to her the thing accursed. Had Miss Mackenzie quoted the Pope, or
Cardinal Wiseman or even Dr Newman, it would not have been so bad.
Mrs Stumfold had once met Mr Paul, and called him to his face the
most abject of all the slaves of the scarlet woman. To this courtesy
Mr Paul, being a good-humoured and somewhat sportive young man,
had replied that she was another. Mrs Stumfold had interpreted the
gentleman's meaning wrongly, and had ever since gnashed with her
teeth and fired great guns with her eyes whenever Mr Paul was named
within her hearing. "Ribald ruffian," she had once said of him; "but
that he thinks his priestly rags protect him, he would not have dared
to insult me." It was said that she had complained to Stumfold; but
Mr Stumfold's sacerdotal clothing, whether ragged or whole, prevented
him also from interfering, and nothing further of a personal nature
had occurred between the opponents.

But Miss Mackenzie, who certainly was a Stumfoldian by her own
choice, should not have used the name. She probably did not know
the whole truth as to that passage of arms between Mr Paul and Mrs
Stumfold, but she did know that no name in Littlebath was so odious
to the lady as that of the rival clergyman.

"Very well, Miss Mackenzie," said she, speaking loudly in her wrath;
"then let me tell you that you will come by your ruin,--yes, by your
ruin. You poor unfortunate woman, you are unfit to guide your own
steps, and will not take counsel from those who are able to put you
in the right way!"

"How shall I be ruined?" said Miss Mackenzie, jumping up from her
seat.

"How? Yes. Now you want to know. After having insulted me in return
for my kindness in coming to you, you ask me questions. If I tell you
how, no doubt you will insult me again."

"I haven't insulted you, Mrs Stumfold. And if you don't like to tell
me, you needn't. I'm sure I did not want you to come to me and talk
in this way."

"Want me! Who ever does want to be reproved for their own folly? I
suppose what you want is to go on and marry that man, who may have
two or three other wives for wh