pect--"

"So do I. And when you get the confidence at first hand, you will
receive it with a better grace than if you had had a contraband
foretaste."

He smiled. "I thought yours a more confidence-winning face, Ermine."

"That depends on my respect for the individual. Now I thought Lady
Temple would much prefer my looking another way, and talking about
Conrade's Latin grammar, to my holding out my arms and inviting her to
pour into my tender breast what another time she had rather not know
that I knew."

"That is being an honourable woman," he said, and Rose's return ended
the exchange of speculations; but it must be confessed that at their
next meeting Ermine's look of suppressed inquiry quite compensated for
her previous banter, more especially as neither had he any confidence to
reveal or conceal, only the tidings that the riders, whose coalition had
justified Lady Temple's prudence, had met Mr. Touchett wandering in the
lanes in the twilight, apparently without a clear idea of what he was
doing there. And on the next evening there was quite an excitement, the
curate looked so ill, and had broken quite down when he was practising
with the choir boys before church; he had, indeed, gone safely through
the services, but at school he had been entirely at a loss as to what
Sunday it was, and had still more unfortunately forgotten that to be
extra civil to Miss Villars was the only hope of retaining her services,
for he had walked by her with less attention than if she had been the
meanest scholar. Nay, when his most faithful curatolatress had offered
to submit to him a design for an illumination for Christmas, he had
escaped from her with a desperate and mysterious answer that he had
nothing to do with illumination, he hoped it would be as sombre as
possible.

No wonder Avonmouth was astonished, and that guesses were not confined
to Mackarel Lane.

"Well, Colin," said Ermine, on the Tuesday, "I have had a first-hand
confidence, though from a different quarter. Poor Mr. Touchett came to
announce his going away."

"Going!"

"Yes. In the very nick of time, it seems, Alick Keith has had a letter
from his uncle's curate, asking him to see if he could meet with a
southern clergyman to exchange duties for the winter with a London
incumbent who has a delicate wife, and of course. Mr. Touchett jumped at
it."

"A very good thing--a great relief."

"Yes. He said he was very anxious for work, but he had lost ground in