.'

'What would you have us do?'

'To see faults is a much easier thing than to originate a sound scheme.
I am far from prepared with any plan of social reconstruction.'

Nor could Mr. Wyvern be moved from the negative attitude, though Mutimer
pressed him.

'Well, I'm sorry you won't come,' Richard said as he rose to take his
leave. 'It didn't strike me that you would feel out of place.'

'Nor should I. But you will understand that my opportunities of being
useful in the village depend on the existence of sympathetic feeling
in my parishioners. It is my duty to avoid any behaviour which could be
misinterpreted.'

'Then you deliberately adapt yourself to the prejudices of unintelligent
people?'

'I do so, deliberately,' assented the vicar, with one of his fleeting
smiles.

Richard went away feeling sorry that he had courted this rejection. He
would never have thought of inviting a 'parson' but for Mrs. Waltham's
suggestion. After all, it it mattered little whether Adela came to the
luncheon or not. He had desired her presence because he wished her to
see him as an entertainer of guests such as the Westlakes, whom she
would perceive to be people of refinement; it occurred to him, too, that
such an occasion might aid his snit by exciting her ambition; for he was
anything but confident of immediate success with Adela, especially since
recent conversations with Mrs. Waltham. But in any case she would attend
the afternoon ceremony, when his glory would be proclaimed.

Mrs. Waltham was anxiously meditative of plans for bringing Adela to
regard her Socialist wooer with more favourable eyes. She, too,
had hopes that Mutimer's fame in the mouths of men might prove an
attraction, yet she suspected a strength of principle in Adela which
might well render all such hopes vain. And she thought it only too
likely, though observation gave her no actual assurance of this, that
the girl still thought of Hubert Eldon in a way to render it doubly hard
for any other man to make an impression upon her. It was dangerous, she
knew, to express her abhorrence of Hubert too persistently; yet, on the
other hand, she was convinced that Adela had been so deeply shocked by
the revelations of Hubert's wickedness that her moral nature would be in
arms against her lingering inclination. After much mental wear and tear,
she decided to adopt the strong course of asking Alfred's assistance.
Alfred was sure to view the proposed match with hearty a