e probability is that
half the old women in Boisingham have got their eyes fixed on the hall
door to see how long I stay. I shall go down to the office and come
back at half-past two."

"A very nice excuse to get rid of me," she said, "but I daresay you
are right, and I want to see about the garden. There, good-bye, and
mind you are not late, for I want to have a nice drive round to the
Castle. Not that there is much need to warn you to be in time when you
are going to see Miss de la Molle, is there? Good-bye, good-bye."

CHAPTER IX

THE SHADOW OF RUIN

Mr. Quest walked to his vestry meeting with a smile upon his thin,
gentlemanly-looking face, and rage and bitterness in his heart.

"I caught her that time," he said to himself; "she can do a good deal
in the way of deceit, but she can't keep the blood out of her cheeks
when she hears that fellow's name. But she is a clever woman, Belle is
--how well she managed that little business of the luncheon, and how
well she fought her case when once she got me in a cleft stick about
Edith and that money of hers, and made good terms too. Ah! that's the
worst of it, she has the whip hand of me there; if I could ruin her
she could ruin me, and it's no use cutting off one's nose to spite
your face. Well! my fine lady," he went on with an ominous flash of
his grey eyes, "I shall be even with you yet. Give you enough rope and
you will hang yourself. You love this fellow, I know that, and it will
go hard if I can't make him break your heart for you. Bah! you don't
know the sort of stuff men are made of. If only I did not happen to be
in love with you myself I should not care. If----Ah! here I am at the
church."

The human animal is a very complicated machine, and can conduct the
working of an extraordinary number of different interests and sets of
ideas, almost, if not entirely, simultaneously. For instance, Mr.
Quest--seated at the right hand of the rector in the vestry room of
the beautiful old Boisingham Church, and engaged in an animated and
even warm discussion with the senior curate on the details of
fourteenth century Church work, in which he clearly took a lively
interest and understood far better than did the curate--would have
been exceedingly difficult to identify with the scheming, vindictive
creature whom we have just followed up the church path. But after all,
that is the way of human nature, although it m