me in for a few minutes and taste our tea;
my sister Sophia was just making it when I came out. We get it from
our brother in Assam, and we think a great deal of it," said Miss
Hemmings; "it can't possibly be adulterated, you know, for it comes
direct from his plantation. If you can't come in just now, I will send
you some to the Rectory, and you shall tell us how you like it. We are
quite proud of our tea. My brother has a large plantation, and he
hopes--"

"Thank you," said Mrs Morgan, "but the Rector will be waiting for me,
and I must go. It must be very nice to have your tea direct from the
plantation; and I hope you will change your mind about Mr Wentworth,"
she continued, without much regard for punctuation, as she shook hands
at the corner. Mrs Morgan went down a narrow street which led to
Grange Lane, after this interview, with some commotion in her mind.
She took Mr Wentworth's part instinctively, without asking any proofs
of his innocence. The sun was just setting, and St Roque's stood out
dark and picturesque against all the glory of the western sky as the
Rector's wife went past. She could not help thinking of him, in his
youth and the opening of his career, with a kind of wistful interest.
If he had married Lucy Wodehouse, and confined himself to his own
district (but then he had no district), Mrs Morgan would have
contemplated the two, not, indeed, without a certain half-resentful
self-reference and contrast, but with natural sympathy. And now, to
think of this dark and ugly blot on his fair beginning disturbed her
much. When Mrs Morgan recollected that she had left her husband and
his Curate consulting over this matter, she grew very hot and angry,
and felt humiliated by the thought. Was it her William, her hero, whom
she had magnified for all these ten years, though not without
occasional twinges of enlightenment, into something great, who was
thus sitting upon his young brother with so little human feeling and
so much middle-aged jealousy? It hurt her to think of it, though not
for Mr Wentworth's sake. Poor Mrs Morgan, though not at all a
sentimental person, had hoarded up her ideal so much after the
ordinary date, that it came all the harder upon her when everything
thus merged into the light of common day. She walked very fast up
Grange Lane, which was another habit of her maidenhood not quite in
accord with the habit of sauntering acquired during the same period by
the Fellow of All-Souls. When Mrs