 me. It angers me,« said Mr. Wyvern. »I am angry with more than
one.«
    »Is there an engagement?«
    »I am unable to say. Tattle generally gets ahead of fact.«
    »It is monstrous!« burst from the young man. »They are taking advantage of
her innocence. She is a child. Why do they educate girls like that? I should
say, how can they leave them so uneducated? In an ideal world it would be all
very well, but see what comes of it here? She is walking with her eyes open into
horrors and curses, and understands as little of what awaits her as a lamb led
to butchery. Do you stand by and say nothing?«
    »It surprises me that you are so affected,« remarked the vicar quietly.
    »No doubt. I can't reason about it. But I know that my life will be hideous
if this goes on to the end.«
    »You are late.«
    »Yes, I am late. I was in Wanley some weeks ago; I did not tell you of it. I
called at their house; they were not at home to me. Yet Adela was sitting at the
window. What did that mean? Is her mother so contemptible that my change of
fortune leads her to treat me in that way?«
    »But does no other reason occur to you?« asked Mr. Wyvern, with grave
surprise.
    »Other reason! What other?«
    »You must remember that gossip is active.«
    »You mean that they have heard about -?«
    »Somehow it had become the common talk of the village very shortly after my
arrival here.«
    Hubert dropped his eyes in bewilderment.
    »Then they think me unfit to associate with them? She - Adela - will look
upon me as a vile creature! But it wasn't so when I saw her immediately after my
illness. She talked freely and with just the same friendliness as before.«
    »Probably she had heard nothing then.«
    »And her mother only began to poison her mind when it was advantageous to do
so?«
    Hubert laughed bitterly.
    »Well, there is an end of it,« he pursued. »Yes, I was forgetting all that.
Oh, it is quite intelligible; I don't blame them. By all means let her be
preserved from contagion! Pooh! I don't know my own mind. Old fancies that I
used to have somehow got hold of me again. If I
