uggle before she
could wind herself up to speak."

Miss Bartlett gave a kind of wriggle, and he prepared for a discussion.
He had never fathomed Miss Bartlett. As he had put it to himself
at Florence, "she might yet reveal depths of strangeness, if not of
meaning." But she was so unsympathetic that she must be reliable. He
assumed that much, and he had no hesitation in discussing Lucy with her.
Minnie was fortunately collecting ferns.

She opened the discussion with: "We had much better let the matter
drop."

"I wonder."

"It is of the highest importance that there should be no gossip in
Summer Street. It would be DEATH to gossip about Mr. Vyse's dismissal at
the present moment."

Mr. Beebe raised his eyebrows. Death is a strong word--surely too
strong. There was no question of tragedy. He said: "Of course, Miss
Honeychurch will make the fact public in her own way, and when she
chooses. Freddy only told me because he knew she would not mind."

"I know," said Miss Bartlett civilly. "Yet Freddy ought not to have told
even you. One cannot be too careful."

"Quite so."

"I do implore absolute secrecy. A chance word to a chattering friend,
and--"

"Exactly." He was used to these nervous old maids and to the exaggerated
importance that they attach to words. A rector lives in a web of petty
secrets, and confidences and warnings, and the wiser he is the less he
will regard them. He will change the subject, as did Mr. Beebe, saying
cheerfully: "Have you heard from any Bertolini people lately? I believe
you keep up with Miss Lavish. It is odd how we of that pension,
who seemed such a fortuitous collection, have been working into one
another's lives. Two, three, four, six of us--no, eight; I had forgotten
the Emersons--have kept more or less in touch. We must really give the
Signora a testimonial."

And, Miss Bartlett not favouring the scheme, they walked up the hill in
a silence which was only broken by the rector naming some fern. On the
summit they paused. The sky had grown wilder since he stood there last
hour, giving to the land a tragic greatness that is rare in Surrey.
Grey clouds were charging across tissues of white, which stretched and
shredded and tore slowly, until through their final layers there gleamed
a hint of the disappearing blue. Summer was retreating. The wind roared,
the trees groaned, yet the noise seemed insufficient for those vast
operations in heaven. The weather was breaking up, breaking, b