-bye just now."

"Oh, Frank, my dear, just come in for a moment, and tell Leonora--it
will show her how wrong she is," said poor aunt Dora, clinging to his
arm.

"Right or wrong, I am not going into any controversy. My aunt Leonora
knows perfectly well what she is doing," said the Curate, with the best
smile he could muster; and so shook hands with her resolutely, and
walked back again all the way down Grange Lane, past the green door, to
his own house. Nobody was about the green door at that particular moment
to ask him in to luncheon, as sometimes happened. He walked down all the
way to Mrs Hadwin's, with something of the sensations of a man who has
just gone through a dreadful operation, and feels, with a kind of dull
surprise after, that everything around him is just the same as before.
He had come through a fiery trial, though nobody knew of it; and just at
this moment, when he wanted all his strength, how strange to feel that
haunting sense of an unnecessary sacrifice--that troubled new vein of
thought which would be worked out, and which concerned matters more
important than Skelmersdale, weighty as that was. He took his sermon out
of his pocket when he got home, and marked a cross upon it, as we have
already said; but, being still a young man, he was thankful to snatch a
morsel of lunch, and hasten out again to his duty, instead of staying to
argue the question with himself. He went to No. 10 Prickett's Lane, and
was a long time with the sick woman, listening to all the woeful tale of
a troubled life, which the poor sick creature had been contemplating for
days and days, in her solitude, through those strange exaggerated
death-gleams which Miss Leonora would have called "the light of
eternity." She remembered all sorts of sins, great and small, which
filled her with nervous terrors; and it was not till close upon the hour
for the Wharfside service, that the Curate could leave his tremulous
penitent. The schoolroom was particularly full that day. Easter,
perhaps, had touched the hearts--it certainly had refreshed the
toilettes--of the bargemen's wives and daughters. Some of them felt an
inward conviction that their new ribbons were undoubtedly owing to the
clergyman's influence, and that Tom and Jim would have bestowed the
money otherwise before the Church planted her pickets in this corner of
the enemy's camp; and the conviction, though not of an elevated
description, was a great deal better than no conviction