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