uld
understand his position.

Like most men who have a repugnance to clerical influence he had a great
idea of its power, and a perfect readiness to make use of it. He was
delighted when he remembered having met Mark Molyneux at Molly's house.
The meeting had not been quite a success, but this he did not remember.
Edmund's half-sleepy easy manner had been more cordial, but not quite so
good as usual. He was just too conscious of the strangeness of the fact
that Edmund Grosse should be talking with a "bon petit cure." He knew
Father Molyneux to be Groombridge's cousin, and to have been considered
a man of unusual promise at Oxford, but, all the same, whatever he had
been, he was a priest now, and Grosse had never quite made up his mind
as to his own manner to a priest. He was so practised in dealing with
other people, but not with ecclesiastics. He did not in the least
realise that the slight condescension and uncertainty in his manner,
with all his effort at cordiality, was the outcome of a rather
deeply-seated antagonism to the claims he conceived all priests to make,
in their hearts, on the souls of men. I have known a man, not altogether
unlike Edmund Grosse, to cross the street in London rather than pass a
priest on the same pavement. Grosse would not have been so foolish as
that, but still, it was not surprising that the two men did not get on
particularly well. All that Edmund now remembered of this chance meeting
was Molly's evidently deep interest in the young priest, and he recalled
her saying at the time when she had been much moved by her mother's
cruel letter, that she was going to hear Father Molyneux preach that
evening. From the avowedly anti-clerical Molly, that meant much.

Edmund knew nothing of the recent talk about Mark, although Mrs.
Delaport Green had tried to sigh out some insinuations on the subject in
talking to him. Perhaps he was a less receptive listener than of yore,
when he had more empty spaces in his mind than he had this year. He
received, indeed, a faint impression that Mrs. Delaport Green was
sentimentalising over some disappointment she was suffering under
acutely with regard to the popular preacher, and had felt her motive to
be curiosity to gain information from himself on some point of which he
knew nothing. But if he had been more attentive he might have gained
enough information to make him hesitate to involve poor Mark in Molly's
affairs.

Almost as soon as he had thought of