lence in the house and
about the house reminded him of the silence of the dead, and he began to
consider what his own span of life might be. He might live as long as
Father Peter (Father Peter was fifty-five when he died); if so,
twenty-one years of existence by the lake's side awaited him, and these
years seemed to him empty like a desert--yes, and as sterile.
'Twenty-one years wondering what became of her, and every evening like
this evening--the same loneliness.'

He sat watching the hands of his clock, and a peaceful meditation about
a certain carnation that unfortunately burst its calyx was interrupted
by a sudden thought. Whence the thought came he could not tell, nor what
had put it into his head, but it had occurred to him suddenly that 'if
Father Peter had lived a few weeks longer he would have found means of
exchanging Nora Glynn for another schoolmistress, more suitable to the
requirements of the parish. If Father Peter had lived he would have done
her a grievous wrong. He wouldn't have allowed her to suffer, but he
would have done her a wrong all the same.' And it were better that a man
should meet his death than he should do a wrong to another. But he
wasn't contemplating his own death nor Nora's when this end to the
difficulty occurred to him. Our inherent hypocrisy is so great that it
is difficult to know what one does think. He surely did not think it
well that Father Peter had died, his friend, his benefactor, the man in
whose house he was living? Of course not. Then it was strange he could
not keep the thought out of his mind that Father Peter's death had saved
the parish from a great scandal, for if Nora had been dismissed he might
have found himself obliged to leave the parish.

Again he turned on himself and asked how such thoughts could come into
his mind. True, the coming of a thought into the consciousness is often
unexpected, but if the thought were not latent in the mind, it would
not arise out of the mind; and if Father Peter knew the base thoughts he
indulged in--yes, indulged in, for he could not put them quite out of
his mind--he feared very much that the gift of all this furniture
might--No, he was judging Father Peter ill: Father Peter was
incapable of a mean regret.

But who was he, he'd like to be told, that he should set himself up as
Father Peter's judge? The evil he had foreseen had happened. If Father
Peter felt that Nora Glynn was not the kind of schoolmistress the parish
requir