are the
good sight for sore eyes,' he said. 'Not but what we've been 'aving an
uncommon peaceful time for Lent. The vicar's lady she's took bad and
took to bed.'

The curate reproved the wicked Higgs, but he inquired after the health
of the invalid.

'I hope Mrs. Moore is not very ill?'

'Bless you, no, sir; she's 'ale and 'earty. Cook says she's sure she've
fell out with some one. That's her way; she takes to bed when she've
fell out with any one. It makes them repent of their sins.'

A soft grey mist lay over land and sea. The church and vicarage were
grey and wet. The beeches at the vicarage gate had broken forth in a
myriad buds of silver green, and all the buds were tipped with water,
and the grey stems were stained and streaked. The yew trees in the
churchyard were bedewed with tiny drops. At the little gate that led
from the vicarage into the churchyard, between the yew trees and the
beeches, the curate waited for Violetta, after evensong. She came out of
the old grey porch and down the path between the graves and the yew
trees with her prayer-book in her hand. She looked like an Easter lily
that holds itself in bud till the sadness of Lent is past, so pure, so
modest, such a perfect thing from the hand of God.

She stopped and started when she saw her lover, and then greeted him
with a little smile, but blent with some reproachful dignity.

'I am glad you have come at last, for I have been wanting to speak to
you. Poor mamma has been very poorly and ill. It has grieved her very
much indeed that you should have so misunderstood her motives, and
treated her so rudely. Mamma takes things like that most deeply to
heart.'

'She told you why I treated her rudely?'

'Yes, she told me, but she did not tell papa anything about it; it would
only vex papa and do no good. Mamma told me to tell you that she had
made up her mind to forgive you, and to say no more about it, although
she was deeply grieved that you should have so misunderstood her.'

'Yes,' said the curate vaguely, for he did not know what else to say.

'Of course, as to the necklace, it may be a matter of opinion as to
whether mamma judged rightly or not; but no one who knows her could
doubt that her one desire was to do what was right. It is quite true
what she says: that the stone was most unsuitable to the station of
those people; every one says that the man was a very common and
vulgar-looking person; and of course to regard such a thing with