leigh. The rumor about
Arleigh had, of course, been a blind; but he, Ralph, thank Heaven, was
not to be taken in in such a hurry as all that! He could look after his
interests as well as most men. In short, he was full of glorification to
the brim, and it was only after hearing a hoarse and full account of the
whole transaction several times over that Charles was able in a pause
for breath to tell him that he had offered Dare a bed, as he was quite
tired out, and was some distance from Vandon.

"All right. Quite right," said Ralph, unheeding; "but you and he missed
the best part of the whole thing. Great Scot! when I saw them come
dodging round under the Black Rock and--" He was off again; and Charles
doubted afterwards, as he fell asleep in his arm-chair by the fire,
whether Ralph, already slumbering peacefully opposite him, had paid the
least attention to what he had told him, and would not have entirely
forgotten it in the morning. And, in fact, he did, and it was not until
Evelyn desired, with dignity, on the morrow, that another time
unsuitable persons should not be brought at midnight to _her_ house,
that he remembered what had happened.

Charles, who was present, immediately took the blame upon himself, but
Evelyn was not to be appeased. By this time the whole neighborhood was
ringing with the news of the arrival of a foreign wife at Vandon, and
Evelyn felt that Dare's presence in her blue bedroom, with crockery and
crewel-work curtains to match, compromised that apartment and herself,
and that he must incontinently depart out of it. It was in vain that
Ralph and even Charles expostulated. She remained unmoved. It was not,
she said, as if she had been unwilling to receive him, in the first
instance, as a possible Roman Catholic, though many might have blamed
her for that, and perhaps she _had_ been to blame; but she had never,
no, never, had any one to stay that anybody could say anything about.
(This was a solemn fact which it was impossible to deny.) Ralph might
remember her own cousin, Willie Best, and she had always liked Willie,
had never been asked again after that time--Ralph chuckled--that time he
knew of. She was very sorry, and she quite understood all Charles meant,
and she quite saw the force of what he said; but she could not allow
people to stay in the house who had foreign wives that had been kept
secret. What was poor Willie, who had only--Ralph need not laugh; there
was nothing to laugh at--what