mpted her to coquette
with Elsley, and was now bringing her into "undesirable" intimacy with
the poor curate.

She had heard that day, with some sorrow, his announcement that he
wished to be gone; but as he did not refer to it again, she left the
thought alone, and all but forgot it. The subject, however, was renewed
about a week afterwards. "When you return to Aberalva," she had said, in
reference to some commission.

"I shall never return to Aberalva."

"Not return?"

"No; I have already resigned the curacy. I believe your uncle has
appointed to it the man whom Campbell found for me: and an excellent
man, I hear, he is. At least, he will do better there than I."

"But what could have induced you? How sorry all the people will be!"

"I am not sure of that," said he with a smile. "I did what I could at
last to win back at least their respect, and to leave at least not
hatred behind me: but I am unfit for them. I did not understand them. I
meant--no matter what I meant? but I failed. God forgive me! I shall now
go somewhere where I shall have simpler work to do, where I shall at
least have a chance of practising the lesson which I learnt there. I
learnt it all, strange to say, from the two people in the parish from
whom I expected to learn least."

"Whom do you mean?"

"The doctor and the schoolmistress."

"Why from them less than from any in the parish? She so good, and he so
clever?"

"That I shall never tell to any one now. Suffice it that I was
mistaken."

Valencia could obtain no further answer; and so the days ran on, every
one becoming more and more intimate, till a certain afternoon, on which
they were all to go and pic-nic, under Claude's pilotage, above the lake
of Gwynnant. Scoutbush was to have been with them; but a heavy day's
rain in the meanwhile swelled the streams into fishing order, so the
little man ordered a car, and started at three in the morning for Bettws
with Mr. Bowie, who, however loth to give up the arrangement of plates
and the extraction of champagne corks, considered his presence by the
river-side a natural necessity.

"My dear Miss Clara, ye see, there'll be nobody to see that his lordship
pits on dry stockings; and he's always getting over the tops of his
water-boots, being young and daft, as we've all been, and no offence to
you; and to tell you truth, I can stand all temptations--in moderation,
that is, save an' except the chance o' cleiking a fish."

CHAPTER XX.