Part 23 (2/2)

”I have already told you my intention,” she responded with a frigidity of manner that again crushed all hope from my heart. ”To-night must be our last night together. Afterwards we must remember one another only as acquaintances.”

”No, no!” I protested. ”Don't say that.”

”It must be,” she responded decisively. All argument appeared useless, so I remained silent.

It was nine o'clock before we left the restaurant, too early for her to return to Madame Gabrielle's, therefore at my invitation she accompanied me to my chambers, and sat with me in my sitting-room for a long time.

So long had we been platonic friends that I could not bring myself to believe that that was really her farewell visit. She sat in the same chair in which Aline had sat on the first night when she had so strangely come into my life, and now again she chatted on merrily, as in the old days, inquiring after mutual friends in Stamford, and what changes had been effected in sleepy, lethargic Duddington. I had told her all the latest gossip of the place, when suddenly I observed--

”Just now everybody in the village is taken up with the new curate.”

”No curate gets on well for very long with old Layton,” she remarked.

”Mr Farrar was a splendid preacher, and they said it was because the rector was jealous of his talents that he got rid of him.”

”Yes, Farrar was a clever fellow, but Yelverton, the new man, is an awfully good chap. He was at college with me, and you may judge my astonishment when I met him, after years of separation, in my mother's drawing-room.”

”What did you say his name was?” she inquired, with knit brows.

”Yelverton--Jack Yelverton,” I answered.

”Yelverton!” She uttered the name in a strange voice, and seemed to shrink at its p.r.o.nouncement.

”Yes. He's a thoroughly good fellow. He was in London--believes in social reform among the poor, and all that sort of thing. Do you know him?”

”I--well, yes. If it is the same man, I've heard of him. He did a lot of good down in the East End somewhere,” she answered evasively.

”I suppose all the girls will be running after him,” I laughed. ”It's really extraordinary what effect a clerical collar has upon some girls; and mothers, too, for the matter of that.”

”They think the Church a respectable profession, perhaps,” she said, joining in my laughter.

”Well, if you're a clergyman you are not compelled to swindle people; a proceeding which nowadays is the essence of good business,” I said.

”The successful commercial man is the fellow who is able to screw the largest amount of profits out of his customers; the rich stockbroker is merely a lucky gambler; and the company promoter is but a liar whose ingenuity is such that by exaggeration he obtains money out of the public's pockets to float his bubble concerns. It is difficult indeed nowadays to find an honest man in trade, and the professions are not much better off. Medicine is but too often quackery; the law has long been synonymous with swindling; parliamentary Honours are too often the satisfying of unbounded egotism; and the profession of the Church is more often than not followed by men to whom a genteel profession is a necessity, whose capabilities are not sufficient to enable them to enter journalism or literature, and who profess in the pulpit what they don't practise in private life.”

She laughed again.

”That's a sweeping condemnation,” she declared. ”But there's a great deal of truth in it. Trade is mostly dishonest, and the more clever the rogue the larger the fortune he ama.s.ses.”

”Yes,” I argued; ”the man who has for years gained huge profits from the public--succeeded in hoodwinking them with some patent medicine, scented soap, or other commodity out of which he has made eighty per cent, profit--is put forward as the type of the successful business man.

There is really no morality in trade in these days.”

”And this Mr Yelverton is actually curate of Duddington,” she said pensively. ”Strange that he should go and bury himself down there, isn't it?”

”He hasn't been well,” I said. ”Work in the slums has upset his health.

He's a good fellow. Not one of those who go in for the Church as an easy means of obtaining five or six hundred a year and a snug parsonage, but an earnest, devout man whose sole object is to do good among his fellow-creatures. Would that there were more of his sort about.”

Thus we chatted on. It seemed as though she knew more of Yelverton than she would admit, and that she had learned with surprise of his whereabouts.

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