ared up. 'Oh,
but I don't think that your schoolmistress would suit a convent school.
I shouldn't like my daughter--' 'What do you mean?' Her face changed
expression, and in her nasty mincing manner she began to throw out hints
that Nora Glynn would not suit the nuns. He could see that she was
concealing something--there was something at the back of her mind. Women
of her sort want to be persuaded; their bits of scandal must be dragged
from them by force; they are the unwilling victims who would say nothing
if they could help it. She had said enough to oblige him to ask her to
speak out, and she began to throw out hints about a man whom Nora used
to meet on the hillside (she wouldn't give the man's name, she was too
clever for that). She would only say that Nora had been seen on the
hillside walking in lonely places with a man. Truly a detestable woman!
His thoughts strayed from her for a moment, for it gave him pleasure to
recollect that he had defended his schoolmistress. Didn't he say: 'Now,
then, Mrs. O'Mara, if you have anything definite to say, say it, but I
won't listen to vague charges.' 'Charges--who is making charges?' she
asked, and he had unfortunately called her a liar. In the middle of the
row she dropped a phrase: 'Anyhow, her appearance is against her.' And
it was true that Nora Glynn's appearance had changed in the last few
months. Seeing that her words had a certain effect, Mrs. O'Mara quieted
down; and while he stood wondering if it could possibly be true that
Nora had deceived them, that she had been living in sin all these
months, he suddenly heard Mrs. O'Mara saying that he was lacking in
experience--which was quite true, but her way of saying it had roused
the devil in him. Who was she that she should come telling him that he
lacked experience? To be sure, he wasn't an old midwife, and that's what
Mrs. O'Mara looked like, sitting before him.

He had lost control of himself, saying, 'Now, will you get out of this
house, you old scandalmonger, or I'll take you by the shoulders and put
you out!' And he had thrown the front-door open. What a look she gave
him as she passed out! At that moment the clock struck three and he
remembered suddenly that the children were coming out of school at that
moment. It would have been better if he had waited. But he couldn't
wait: he'd have gone mad if he had waited; and he recalled how he had
jumped into the road, squeezed through the stile, and run across the
field