to
ask a man's advice.

"Oh, Mr. Barter," she said, "my cousin, Gregory Vigil, has just brought
me some news; it is confidential, please. Helen Bellew is going to sue
for a divorce. I wanted to ask you whether you could tell me----"
Looking in the Rector's face, she stopped.

"A divorce! H'm! Really!"

A chill of terror came over Mrs. Pendyce.

"Of course you will not mention it to anyone, not even to Horace. It has
nothing to do with us."

Mr. Barter bowed; his face wore the expression it so often wore in school
on Sunday mornings.

"H'm!" he said again.

It flashed through Mrs. Pendyce that this man with the heavy jowl and
menacing eyes, who sat so square on that flimsy chair, knew something.
It was as though he had answered:

"This is not a matter for women; you will be good enough to leave it to
me."

With the exception of those few words of Lady Malden's, and the
recollection of George's face when he had said, "Oh yes, I see her now
and then," she had no evidence, no knowledge, nothing to go on; but she
knew from some instinctive source that her son was Mrs. Bellew's lover.

So, with terror and a strange hope, she saw Gregory entering the room.

"Perhaps," she thought, "he will make Grig stop it."

She poured out Gregory's tea, followed Bee and Cecil Tharp into the
conservatory, and left the two men together:

CHAPTER II

CONTINUED INFLUENCE OF THE REVEREND HUSSELL BARTER

To understand and sympathise with the feelings and action of the Rector
of Worsted Skeynes, one must consider his origin and the circumstances of
his life.

The second son of an old Suffolk family, he had followed the routine of
his house, and having passed at Oxford through certain examinations, had
been certificated at the age of twenty-four as a man fitted to impart to
persons of both sexes rules of life and conduct after which they had been
groping for twice or thrice that number of years. His character, never
at any time undecided, was by this fortunate circumstance crystallised
and rendered immune from the necessity for self-search and spiritual
struggle incidental to his neighbours. Since he was a man neither below
nor above the average, it did not occur to him to criticise or place
himself in opposition to a system which had gone on so long and was about
to do him so much good. Like all average men, he was a believer in
authority, and none the less because authority placed a large portion of
itself in