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e on. Victoria, in the absence of her parents, took me into a corner to inquire under her breath, "Is he really very awful?" Norah--she had known all about it; they hadn't spared her, they hadn't kept it from her; you couldn't keep anything from Norah; she had got it all out of Viola the day before I came down the first time--Norah told me I'd have to make her father ask them down. She took Jevons's view that it was the Canon who was causing all the scandal now (only she called it fuss). There never would have been any if Mummy and Daddy had had the sense to take it properly and treat it as a joke. Nobody who knew Viola could take it as anything else. "But," she said, "if Daddy goes about pulling a long face and keeping up his sore throat over it, everybody'll think there must be something in it. I could have got it all right for them in a jiffy if they'd left it to me." "What would you have done, then?" I was really anxious to know. "Oh, I'd have run round telling everybody about it--as a joke. A thundering good joke. If they'd turned me on to it in time I could have easily overtaken those shocking old cats who got in first. As it is," she said, "I've stopped a lot of it--though Daddy doesn't know it--just that way. You should have seen me with the Colonel and the Dean! But if somebody doesn't stop Daddy he'll go and mess it all up again. Don't you remember how he dished my game at dinner the first night you were here?" Yes. I remembered. It came back to me, that startling indiscretion at the dinner-table which was, after all, so deliciously discreet. Knowing Norah as I know her now, I wouldn't mind betting that Jevons owes his position, in Canterbury (and he has one) to-day far more to his youngest sister-in-law's manoeuvres with the Dean and Chapter than to my handling of his case--No; I'm forgetting what he does owe that to. Let's say, then, his position in Canterbury yesterday--a year ago. Well, I had an hour's talk with the Canon. There was some awkwardness in having to point out to a man of his beauty and dignity that his duty lay in any other direction than the one he was so plainly heading for. I put it on the grounds of pity. I pleaded for Viola, I said she was unhappy. He replied that that was not the account she had given of herself. I said, Perhaps not. But if she wasn't unhappy now she very soon would be if he persisted in refusing to acknowledge them. But his lip went stiffer and stiffer
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