certainly unpardonably ill-timed. Madame de Netteville retreated into
herself with a shrug. Robert, in whom a sore nerve had been set jarring,
did his utmost to begin his talk with her again.

In vain!--for the squire struck in. He had been sitting huddled
together--his cynical eyes wandering from Wishart to Elsmere--when
suddenly some extravagant remark of the young Catholic, and Robert's
effort to edge away from the conversation, caught his attention at the
same moment. His face hardened, and in his nasal voice he dealt a swift
epigram at Mr. Wishart, which for the moment left the young disputant
floundering.

But only for the moment. In another minute or two the argument, begun so
casually, had developed into a serious trial of strength, in which the
squire and young Wishart took the chief parts, while Mr. Spooner threw
in a laugh and a sarcasm here and there.

And as long as Mr. Wendover talked, Madame de Netteville listened.
Robert's restless repulsion to the whole incident, his passionate wish
to escape from these phrases and illustrations and turns of argument
which were all so wearisomely stale and familiar to him, found no
support in her. Mrs. Darcy dared not second his attempts at chat, for
Mr. Wendover, on the rare occasions when he held forth, was accustomed
to be listened to; and Elsmere was of too sensitive a social fibre to
break up the party by an abrupt exit, which could only have been
interpreted in one way.

So he stayed, and perforce listened, but in complete silence. None of
Mr. Wendover's side-hits touched him. Only as the talk went on, the
rector in the background got paler and paler; his eyes, as they passed
from the mobile face of the Catholic convert, already, for those who
knew, marked with the signs of death, to the bronzed visage of the
squire, grew duller--more instinct with a slowly-dawning despair.

* * * * *

Half an hour later he was once more on the road leading to the park
gate. He had a vague memory that at parting the squire had shown him the
cordiality of one suddenly anxious to apologise by manner, if not by
word. Otherwise everything was forgotten. He was only anxious, half
dazed as he was, to make out wherein lay the vital difference between
his present self and the Elsmere who had passed along that road an hour
before.

He had heard a conversation on religious topics, wherein nothing was new
to him, nothing affected him intellectually at a