ed the rector. "I wish you could make
me sure of that."

"I do, I know I do," said the curate earnestly. "I can say no more."

"My dear fellow, I haven't the merest shadow of a doubt of it," returned
the rector, smiling. "What I wished was, that you could make me sure _I_
do."

"Pardon me, my dear sir, but, judging from sore experience, if I could I
would rather make you doubt it; the doubt, even if an utter mistake,
would in the end be so much more profitable than any present
conviction."

"You have your wish, then, Wingfold: I doubt it very much," replied the
rector. "I must go home and think about it all. You shall hear from me
in a day or two."

As he spoke Mr. Bevis rose, and stood for a moment like a man greatly
urged to stretch his arms and legs. An air of uneasiness pervaded his
whole appearance.

"Will you not stop and take tea with us?" said the curate. "My wife will
be disappointed if you do not. You have been good to her for twenty
years, she says."

"She makes an old man of me," returned the rector musingly. "I remember
her such a tiny thing in a white frock and curls. Tell her what we have
been talking about, and beg her to excuse me. I _must_ go home."

He took his hat from the table, shook hands with Wingfold, and walked
back to the inn. There he found his horses bedded, and the hostler away.
His coachman was gone too, nobody knew whither.

To sleep at the inn would have given pointed offense, but he would
rather have done so than go back to the Manor House to hear his curate
abused. With the help of the barmaid, he put the horses to the carriage
himself, and to the astonishment of Mrs. Ramshorn and his wife, drew up
at the door of the Manor House.

Expostulation on the part of the former was vain. The latter made none:
it was much the same to Mrs. Bevis where she was, so long as she was
with her husband. Indeed few things were more pleasant to her than
sitting in the carriage alone, contemplating the back of Mr. Bevis on
the box, and the motion of his elbows as he drove. Mrs. Ramshorn
received their adieux very stiffly, and never after mentioned the rector
without adding the epithet, "poor man!"

Mrs. Bevis enjoyed the drive; Mr. Bevis did not. The doubt was growing
stronger and stronger all the way, that he had not behaved like a
gentleman in his relation to the head of the church. He had naturally,
as I have already shown, a fine, honorable, boyish if not childlike
nature; and the eyes