t. Clergymen never accommodate themselves
to anything or anybody."

The Reverend Lisle Lindsay did at last look rather disconcerted.
Mischievous Doreen saw her triumph and made the most of it.

"So that settles the matter, doesn't it? I can't accommodate myself; you
can't either. What could possibly come of a union like that?"

"The greatest happiness this world is capable of affording, and the hope
of a happiness more abiding hereafter," said he; "all the happiness that
a true woman can bring to the man she loves."

Doreen threw up her head quickly.

"Ah! that's just it," cried she. "'To the man she loves!' But you are
not the man I love, Mr. Lindsay. I suppose it's one of the things I
ought not to do--one of the unconventional and so unchristian things--to
own that I love a man who doesn't love me. But I do. Now, you know who
it is, and everybody knows; but, for all that, you mustn't tell; you
must keep it as a secret that Doreen Wedmore--proud, stuck-up Doreen--is
breaking her heart for the sake of a man who--who--" Her voice broke and
she paused for a moment to recover herself; then she said, in a lighter
tone: "Ah, well, we mustn't be hard upon him, either, for we don't
know--it's so difficult to know."

She sprang up from her seat; and the curate rose too. By her tactful
mention of her own unlucky love she had softened the blow of her
rejection of him. She had been rather too kind indeed, considering the
tenacity of the person she had to deal with; for the curate considered
his case by no means so hopeless as it was; and instead of taking
himself off forlornly, as she would have wished, he stayed on until the
young men swarmed up from the billiard-room and bore the whole party
down to the hall.

Mr. Wedmore, in great glee at having carried his point in the face of
the family resistance, led Mrs. Hutchinson down stairs, and then handed
her over to Max, while he himself threw open the door leading to the
servants' quarters, and invited the group of neat maids and stalwart
young men from the garden and stable to enter.

But here there was a hitch in the arrangements. The cook, in a bad
temper, smarting with disapproval of the whole business, had refused to
join the others, and, as nothing could be done without her, Mr. Wedmore
had to penetrate into the servants' hall, where he found her sitting in
state, and, luckily, dressed for the occasion.

Never in his life had Mr. Wedmore exerted himself so much to pl