Rachel stood by without a word.

"For what?" cried Mrs. Venables. "For telling her what the whole world
thinks of her? Never; and you will unlock that door this instant, unless
you wish my husband to--to--horsewhip you within an inch of your life!"

Steel merely smiled; he could well afford to do so, lithe and supple as
he still was, with flabby Mr. Venables in his mind's eye.

"I might have known what to expect in this house," continued Mrs.
Venables, in a voice hoarse with suppressed passion, "what unmanly and
ungentlemanly behavior, what cowardly insults! I might have known!"

And she glanced from the windows to the bells.

"It is no use ringing," said Steel, with a shake of his snowy head, "or
doing anything else of the sort. I am the only person on the premises
who can let you out; your footman could not get in if he tried; but if
you like I shall shout to him to try. As for insults, you have insulted
my wife most cruelly and gratuitously, for I happen to have heard more
than you evidently imagine. In fact, 'insult' is hardly the word for
what even I have heard you say; let me warn you, madam, that you have
sailed pretty close to the wind already in the way of indictable
slander. You seem to forget that my wife was tried and acquitted by
twelve of her fellow-countrymen. You will at least apologize for that
forgetfulness before you leave this room."

"Never!"

Steel looked at his watch and sat down. "I begin to fear you are no
judge of character, Mrs. Venables; otherwise you would have seen ere
this which of us will have to give in sooner or later. I can only tell
you which of us never will!"

And Rachel still stood by without a word.

CHAPTER XVII

FRIENDS IN NEED

That afternoon the Vicar of Marley was paying house-to-house visits
among his humbler parishioners. Though his conversation was the weak
point to which attention has been drawn, Hugh Woodgate nevertheless
possessed the not too common knack of chatting with the poor. He had the
simplicity which made them kin, and his sympathy, unlike that of so many
persons who consider themselves sympathetic, was not exclusively
reserved for the death-bed and the ruined home. He wrote letters for the
illiterate, found places for the unemployed, knew one baby from another
as soon as their own mothers, and with his own hand sent to the local
papers full reports of the village matches in which he rarely scored a
run. Until this August afternoon he was n