er coming triumph, and
ordered Mr. Todd to be admitted.

The interview that followed confirmed the curate's worst fears. He told
Miss Cope the whole story, and she flatly refused to believe a word of
it. He begged her to go herself to the circus proprietor and his wife
for proof of its truth, and she simply laughed in his face. He appealed
to her honour to keep the story secret, and she coldly reminded him of
the duty that devolved upon her, in her father's absence, of protecting
the morals of his congregation.

Then at last, beaten and baffled at all points, the unhappy curate
played his final card. He offered the Vicar's daughter the best possible
evidence of his sincerity by asking her to become his wife. The effect
was magical. It was the first chance of a husband that had ever come to
Caroline in her thirty-nine years of life, and she had an inward
conviction that it would be the last. The secret she had just learnt was
known to no one in the parish but herself, and so, after a brief
pretence of further parley to save appearances, she jumped at the offer,
and the curate left the Vicarage an engaged man. His last desperate
throw had succeeded. He had saved his position and his reputation; but
at what a cost he dared not even think.

[Illustration: "SOMETHING VERY SERIOUSLY WRONG."]

Within the next day or two, it became evident to all whom he met that
there was something very seriously wrong with the Rev. Thomas Todd. His
manner became first morose and abstracted, and then wild and eccentric.
He was seen very little in the town, and when he did appear, his haggard
face, his strange, absent air, and the unmistakable evidences of the
profound depression that possessed him, were the objects of general
remark. Some of the more charitable expressed a confident opinion that
the curate had committed a crime; others decided, with more penetration,
that he was going mad. From Miss Cope he kept carefully aloof. It had
been arranged at that fatal interview that their engagement should be
kept secret until the return of the Vicar, whose sanction must be
obtained before the affair could be made public. Miss Cope was aware
that the curate had two sermons to prepare in addition to his parish
duties--for he would have to preach twice on Sunday owing to her
father's absence; so she did not allow his non-appearance at the
Vicarage on Friday or Saturday to greatly surprise her.

If she could have seen the way in which the prepara