assumed
with the mob, he laid aside with the curate, and showed himself as
agreeable a companion as man could need; while Tom in his turn found
that Headley was a rational and sweet-tempered man, who, even where
he had made up his mind to differ, could hear an adverse opinion, put
sometimes in a startling shape, without falling into any of those male
hysterics of sacred horror, which are the usual refuge of ignorance
and stupidity, terrified by what it cannot refute. And soon Tom began
to lay aside the reserve which he usually assumed to clergymen, and to
tread on ground which Headley would gladly have avoided. For, to tell
the truth, ever since Tom had heard of Grace's intended dismissal, the
curate's opinions had assumed a practical importance in his eyes; and
he had vowed in secret that, if his cunning failed him not, turned out
of her school she should not be. Whether she had stolen his money or
not, she had saved his life; and nobody should wrong her, if he could
help it. Besides, perhaps she had not his money. The belt might have
slipped off in the struggle; some one else might have taken it off in
carrying him up; he might have mistaken the shame of innocence in her
face for that of guilt. Be it as it might, he had not the heart
to make the matter public, and contented himself with staying at
Aberalva, and watching for every hint of his lost treasure.

By which it befell that he was thinking, the half of every day at
least, about Grace Harvey; and her face was seldom out of his mind's
eye; and the more he looked at it, either in fancy or in fact, the
more did it fascinate him. They met but rarely, and then interchanged
the most simple and modest of salutations: but Tom liked to meet her,
would have gladly stopped to chat with her; however, whether from
modesty or from a guilty conscience, she always hurried on in silence.

And she? Tom's request to her, through Willis, to say nothing about
the matter, she had obeyed, as her mother also had done. That Tom
suspected her was a thought which never crossed her mind; to suspect
any one herself was in her eyes a sin; and if the fancy that this man
or that, among the sailors who had carried Tom up to Heale's, might
have been capable of the baseness, she thrust the thought from her,
and prayed to be forgiven for her uncharitable judgment.

But night and day there weighed on that strange and delicate spirit
the shame of the deed, as heavily, if possible, as if she hersel