en looking on, perplexed, not perceiving the drift of the
examination. He roused himself up to answer now--a little alarmed, to
tell the truth, by the new lights thrown on the subject, and vexed to
see how unconsciously far both the women had gone.

"It aint easy to go into a house in Grange Lane without meeting of
some one in the garden," said Mr Elsworthy; "not as I mean to say it
was the right thing for Rosa to be going them errands after dark. My
orders is against that, as she knows; and what's the good of keeping
two boys if things isn't to be done at the right time? Mr Wentworth
himself was a-reproving of me for sending out Rosa, as it might be the
last time he was here; for she's one of them as sits in the chancel
and helps in the singing, and he feels an interest in her, natural,"
said the apologetic clerk. Miss Dora gave him a troubled look, but
took no further notice of his speech. She thought, with an instinctive
contempt for the masculine spectator, that it was impossible he could
know anything about it, and pursued her own wiser way.

"It is very wrong of you--a girl in your position," said Miss Dora, as
severely as she could in her soft old voice, "to be seen walking about
with a gentleman, even when he is your clergyman, and, of course, has
nothing else in his head. Young men don't think anything of it," said
the rash but timid preacher; "of course it was only to take care of you,
and keep you out of harm's way. But then you ought to think what a
trouble it was to Mr Wentworth, taking him away from his studies--and it
is not nice for a young girl like you." Miss Dora paused to take breath,
not feeling quite sure in her own mind whether this was the right thing
to say. Perhaps it would have been better to have disbelieved the fact
altogether, and declared it impossible. She was much troubled about it,
as she stood looking into the flushed tearful face, with all that light
of defiance behind the tears, and felt instinctively that little Rosa,
still only a pretty, obstinate, vain, uneducated little girl, was more
than a match for herself, with all her dearly-won experiences. The
little thing was bristling with a hundred natural weapons and defences,
against which Miss Dora's weak assault had no chance.

"If it was a trouble, he need not have come," said Rosa, more and more
convinced that Mr Wentworth must certainly have meant something. "I am
sure _I_ did not want him. He insisted on coming, though I begged