said Lucy, taking Mr Wodehouse's arm, who had suddenly
appeared from underneath the lamp, still unlighted, at Dr
Marjoribanks's door. She clung to her father with unusual eagerness,
willing enough to escape from the darkness and the Curate's side, and
all the tremulous sensations of the hour.

"What could happen?" said Mr Wodehouse, who still looked "limp" from
his recent illness, "though I hear there are doubtful people about; so
they tell me--but you ought to know best, Wentworth. Who is that
fellow in the beard that went by on the other side? Not little Lake
the drawing-master? Fancied I had seen the build of the man
before--eh?--a stranger? Well, it's a mistake, perhaps. Can't be sure
of anything nowadays;--memory failing. Well, that's what the doctor
says. Come in and rest and see Molly; as for me, I'm not good for
much, but you won't get better company than the girls, or else that's
what folks tell me. Who did you say that fellow was?" said the
churchwarden, leaning across his daughter to see Mr Wentworth's face.

"I don't know anything about him," said the Curate of St Roque's.

And curiously enough silence fell upon the little party, nobody could
tell how;--for two minutes, which looked like twenty, no one spoke.
Then Lucy roused herself, apparently with a little effort. "We seem to
talk of nothing but the man with the beard to-night," she said. "Mary
knows everything that goes on in Carlingford--she will tell us about
him; and if Miss Wentworth thinks it too late to come in, we will say
good-night," she continued, with a little decision of tone, which was
not incomprehensible to the Perpetual Curate. Perhaps she was a little
provoked and troubled in her own person. To say so much in looks and
so little in words, was a mode of procedure which puzzled Lucy. It
fretted her, because it looked unworthy of her hero. She withdrew
within the green door, holding her father's arm fast, and talking to
him, while Mr Wentworth strained his ears after the voice, which he
thought he could have singled out from a thousand voices. Perhaps Lucy
talked to drown her thoughts; and the Curate went away dumb and
abstracted, with his aunt leaning on his arm on the other side of the
wall. He could not be interested, as Miss Dora expected him to be, in
the Miss Wentworths' plans. He conducted her to the Blue Boar
languidly, with an evident indifference to the fact that his aunt
Leonora was about to become a permanent resident in Carl