is a
deppity, and apt to be rather wandering in his wits as regards time and
such like, which hev stood in the way of the man's getting a benefit. But
no doubt he'll come.'

'The regular incumbent is away, then?'

'He's gone for his bare pa'son's fortnight,--that's all; and we was
forced to put up with a weak-talented man or none. The best men goes
into the brewing, or into the shipping now-a-days, you see, sir;
doctrines being rather shaddery at present, and your money's worth not
sure in our line. So we church officers be left poorly provided with men
for odd jobs. I'll tell ye what, sir; I think I'd better run round to
the gentleman's lodgings, and try to find him?'

'Pray do,' said Lady Constantine.

The clerk left the church; his wife busied herself with dusting at the
further end, and Swithin and Viviette were left to themselves. The
imagination travels so rapidly, and a woman's forethought is so
assumptive, that the clerk's departure had no sooner doomed them to
inaction than it was borne in upon Lady Constantine's mind that she would
not become the wife of Swithin St. Cleeve, either to-day or on any other
day. Her divinations were continually misleading her, she knew: but a
hitch at the moment of marriage surely had a meaning in it.

'Ah,--the marriage is not to be!' she said to herself. 'This is a
fatality.'

It was twenty minutes past, and no parson had arrived. Swithin took her
hand.

'If it cannot be to-day, it can be to-morrow,' he whispered.

'I cannot say,' she answered. 'Something tells me _no_.'

It was almost impossible that she could know anything of the deterrent
force exercised on Swithin by his dead uncle that morning. Yet her
manner tallied so curiously well with such knowledge that he was struck
by it, and remained silent.

'You have a black tie,' she continued, looking at him.

'Yes,' replied Swithin. 'I bought it on my way here.'

'Why could it not have been less sombre in colour?'

'My great-uncle is dead.'

'You had a great-uncle? You never told me.'

'I never saw him in my life. I have only heard about him since his
death.'

He spoke in as quiet and measured a way as he could, but his heart was
sinking. She would go on questioning; he could not tell her an untruth.
She would discover particulars of that great-uncle's provision for him,
which he, Swithin, was throwing away for her sake, and she would refuse
to be his for his own sake. His conclusion at thi