k' up her moind whether to go or no. She wur a soft
thing, that wench, it wur allus whichivver way th' wind blowed wi' her.
I could nivver see what that lass o' Lowrie's wanted wi' her. Now she's
getten th' choild on her honds."

The double shock had numbed Joan. She went about the place and waited
upon her father in a dull, mechanical way. She said but little to the
curious crowd, who, on pretence of being neighborly, flocked to the
house. She had even had very little to say to Anice. Perhaps after all,
her affection for poor Liz had been a stronger one than she had thought.

"I think," Grace said gently to Anice, "that she does not exactly need
us yet."

He made the remark in the Rector's presence and the Reverend Harold did
not agree with him.

"I am convinced that you are mistaken, Grace," he said. "You are a
little too--well, too delicately metaphysical for these people. You have
sensitive fancies about them, and they are not a sensitive class. What
they want is good strong doctrine, and a certain degree of wholesome
frankness. They need teaching. That young woman, now--it seems to
me that this is the time to rouse her to a sense of her--her moral
condition. She ought to be roused, and so ought the man. It is a great
pity that he is unconscious."

Of Joan's strange confession of faith, Anice had told him something, but
he had been rather inclined to pronounce it "emotional," and somehow
or other could not quite divest himself of the idea that she needed
the special guidance of a well-balanced and experienced mind. The
well-balanced and experienced mind in view was his own, though of course
he was not aware of the fact that he would not have been satisfied with
that of any other individual. He was all the more disinclined to believe
in Joan's conversion because his interviews with her continued to be
as unsatisfactory as ever. Her manner had altered; she had toned down
somewhat, but she still caused him to feel ill at ease. If she did not
defy him any longer or set his teachings at naught, her grave eyes,
resting on him silently, had sometimes the effect of making his words
fail him; which was a novel experience with the Rector.

In a few days Lowrie began to sink visibly. As the doctor predicted, the
reaction was powerful, and remedies were of no avail. He lay upon the
bed, at times unconscious, at times tossing to and fro in delirium.
During her watching at the bedside, Joan learned the truth. Sometimes he