e places then, for that matter. I'm going away from
Carlingford. I can't stay in such a wretched hole any longer. It's
gout or something?" said the man, with a tone of nature breaking
through his bravado--"it's not anything that has happened? Say so, and
I'll never trouble you more."

"Oh, if Lucy were to see him!" said poor Miss Wodehouse. The words
came unawares out of her heart without any thought; but the next thing
of which she was conscious was that the Perpetual Curate had laid his
hand on the stranger's arm, and was leading him reluctantly away. "I
will tell you all you want to know," said Mr Wentworth, "but not
here;" and with his hand upon the other's arm, moved him somehow with
an irresistible command, half physical, half mental, to the door.
Before Miss Wodehouse could say anything they were gone; before she
could venture to draw that long sighing breath of relief, she heard
the door below close, and the retreating footsteps in the garden. But
the sound, thankful though she was, moved her to another burst of
bitter tears. "To think I should have to tell a stranger to take him
away," she sobbed, out of the anguish of her heart; and sat weeping
over him with a relenting that wrung her tender spirit, without power
to move till the servant came up with alarmed looks to ask if any one
had come in in his absence. "Oh, no; it was only Mr Wentworth--and
a--gentleman who came to fetch him," said Miss Wodehouse. And she got
up, trembling as she was, and told John he had better shut up the
house and go to bed. "For I hope papa will have a better night, and
we must not waste our strength," she said, with a kind of woeful
smile, which was a wonder to John. He said Miss Wodehouse was a
tender-hearted one, to be sure, when he went down-stairs; but that was
no very novel piece of information to anybody there.

Meantime the Curate went down Grange Lane with that strange lodger of
Mrs Hadwin's, who had broken thus into Miss Wodehouse's solitude. They
did not say much to each other as they went sullenly side by side down
the silent road; for the stranger, whose feelings were not complicated
by any very lively sense of gratitude, looked upon his companion as a
kind of jailer, and had an unspeakable grudge against the man who
exercised so calm an ascendancy over him; though to be sure it might
have been difficult to resist the moral force of the Curate of St
Roque's, who was three inches taller than himself, and had the
unbrok