leads her to treat me in that way?'

'But does no other reason occur to you?' asked Mr. Wyvern, with grave
surprise.

'Other reason! What other?'

'You must remember that gossip is active.'

'You mean that they have heard abou--?'

'Somehow it had become the common talk of the village very shortly after
my arrival here.'

Hubert dropped his eyes in bewilderment.

'Then they think me unfit to associate with them? She--Adela will look
upon me as a vile creature! But it wasn't so when I saw her immediately
after my illness. She talked freely and with just the same friendliness
as before.'

'Probably she had heard nothing then.'

'And her mother only began to poison her mind when it was advantageous
to do so?'

Hubert laughed bitterly.

'Well, there is an end of it,' he pursued. 'Yes, I was forgetting all
that. Oh, it is quite intelligible; I don't blame them. By all means
let her be preserved from contagion! Pooh! I don't know my own mind.
Old fancies that I used to have somehow got hold of me again If I ever
marry, it must be a woman of the world, a woman with brain and heart to
judge human nature. It is gone, as if I had never had such a thought.
Poor child, to be sure; but that's all one can say.'

His tone was as far from petulance as could be. Hubert's emotions were
never feebly coloured; his nature ran into extremes, and vehemence of
scorn was in him the true voice of injured tenderness. Of humility he
knew but little, least of all where his affections were concerned, but
there was the ring of noble metal in his self-assertion. He would never
consciously act or speak a falsehood, and was intolerant of the lies,
petty or great, which conventionality and warped habits of thought
encourage in those of weaker personality.

'Let us be just,' remarked Mr. Wyvern, his voice sounding rather
sepulchral after the outburst of youthful passion. 'Mrs. Waltham's point
of view is not inconceivable. I, as you know, am not altogether a man of
formulas, but I am not sure that my behaviour would greatly differ from
hers in her position; I mean as regards yourself.'

'Yes, yes; I admit the reasonableness of it,' said Hubert more calmly,
'granted that you have to deal with children. But Adela is too old to
have no will or understanding. It may be she has both. After all she
would scarcely allow herself to be forced into a detestable marriage.
Very likely she takes her mother's practical views.'

'There is such a thin