he sulky and shabby rascal was radiant
still with the fascinating though faded glory of "a gentleman"--"and
he aint one as has been used to regular hours; and seeing as he was a
friend of yours, I knew as hall was safe, Mr Wentworth; and oh, sir,
if you'll not tell missis, as might be angry. I didn't mean no harm;
and knowing as he was a friend of yours, I let him have the key of the
little door."

Here Sarah put her apron to her eyes; she did not cry much into it, or
wet it with her tears--but under its cover she peeped at Mr Wentworth,
and, encouraged by his looks, which did not seem to promise any
immediate catastrophe, went on with her explanation.

"He's been and took a walk often in the morning," said Sarah, with
little gasps which interrupted her voice, "and come in as steady as
steady, and nothing happened. He's gone for a walk now, poor
gentleman. Them as goes out first thing in the morning, can't mean no
harm, Mr Wentworth. If it was at night, it would be different," said
the apologetic Sarah. "He'll be in afore we've done our breakfast in
the kitchen; that's his hour, for I always brings him a cup of coffee.
If you hadn't been up not till _your_ hour, sir, you'd never have
known nothing about it;" and here even Mrs Hadwin's housemaid looked
sharply in the Curate's face. "I never knew you so early, sir, not
since I've been here," said Sarah; and though she was a partisan of Mr
Wentworth, it occurred even to Sarah that perhaps, after all,
Elsworthy might be right.

"If he comes in let me know immediately," said the Curate; and he went
to his study and shut himself in, to think it all over with a sense of
being baited and baffled on every side. As for Sarah, she went off in
great excitement to discuss the whole business with the cook, tossing
her head as she went. "Rosa Elsworthy, indeed!" said Sarah to herself,
thinking her own claims to admiration quite as well worth
considering--and Mr Wentworth had already lost one humble follower in
Grange Lane.

The Curate sat down at his table as before, and gazed with a kind of
exasperation at the paper and the text out of which his sermon was to
have come. "When the wicked man turneth away from the evil of his
ways"--he began to wonder bitterly whether that ever happened, or if it
was any good trying to bring it about. If it were really the case that
Wodehouse, whom he had been labouring to save from the consequences of
one crime, had, at the very crisis of his fat