t I think it's very odd
that you shouldn't have said a word about knowing him even to his
housekeeper."

"It was a whim of mine," she murmured. "Besides, I don't know him very
well. We met at Eastbourne once when I was staying there with Mother."

"Well, why didn't he say 'How do you do, Miss Ogilvie?' instead of
breathing out 'you' like that?"

Esther turned furiously upon Mark.

"What has it got to do with you?"

"Nothing whatever to do with me," he said deliberately. "But if you
think you're going to make a fool of me, you're not. Are you going to
tell your brother you knew him?"

Esther would not answer, and separated by several yards they walked
sullenly back to the Rectory.

CHAPTER XIV

ST. MARK'S DAY

Mark tried next day to make up his difference with Esther; but she
repulsed his advances, and the friendship that had blossomed after the
Pomeroy affair faded and died. There was no apparent dislike on either
side, nothing more than a coolness as of people too well used to each
other's company. In a way this was an advantage for Mark, who was having
to apply himself earnestly to the amount of study necessary to win a
scholarship at Oxford. Companionship with Esther would have meant
considerable disturbance of his work, for she was a woman who depended
on the inspiration of the moment for her pastimes and pleasures, who was
impatient of any postponement and always avowedly contemptuous of Mark's
serious side. His classical education at Haverton House had made little
of the material bequeathed to him by his grandfather's tuition at
Nancepean. None of his masters had been enough of a scholar or enough of
a gentleman (and to teach Latin and Greek well one must be one or the
other) to educate his taste. The result was an assortment of grammatical
facts to which he was incapable of giving life. If the Rector of
Wych-on-the-Wold was not a great scholar, he was at least able to repair
the neglect of, more than the neglect of, the positive damage done to
Mark's education by the meanness of Haverton House; moreover, after Mark
had been reading with him six months he did find a really first-class
scholar in Mr. Ford, the Vicar of Little Fairfield. Mark worked
steadily, and existence in Oxfordshire went by without any great
adventures of mind, body, or spirit. Life at the Rectory had a kind of
graceful austerity like the well-proportioned Rectory itself. If Mark
had bothered to analyze the cause of this gra