id. 'I was a fool to come here thinking that my being
poor would matter. I might have known. Indeed, I think I did know even
before I spoke to you.'

She had no answer except a long soft laugh, which was half smothered in
his arms.

CHAPTER XX

On Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons Canon Beecher enjoyed the
privilege of a fire in his study. He was supposed to be engaged at these
seasons in the preparation of his sermons, a serious and exacting work
which demanded solitude and profound quiet. In earlier years he really
had prepared his sermons painfully, but long practice brings to the
preacher a certain fatal facility. Old ideas are not improved by being
clothed in new phrases, and of new ideas--a new idea will occasionally
obtrude itself even on the Christian preacher--the Canon was exceedingly
mistrustful. The study was an unexciting and comparatively comfortable
room. The firelight on winter afternoons played pleasantly on the
dim gold backs of the works of St. Augustine, a fine folio edition
bequeathed to Mrs. Beecher by a scholarly uncle, which reposed
undisturbed along a lower shelf. Adventurous rays occasionally explored
a faded print of the Good Shepherd which hung above the books, and
gleamed upon the handle of the safe where the parish registers and
church plate were stored. The quiet and the process of digesting his
mid-day dinner frequently tempted the Canon to indulge in a series of
pleasant naps on Sunday afternoons.

When Hyacinth tapped at the study door and entered, the room was almost
dark, and the sermon preparation, if proceeding at all, can have got no
further than the preliminary concatenation of ideas. The Canon, however,
was aggressively, perhaps suspiciously, wide awake.

'Who is that?' he asked. 'Oh, Conneally, it is you. I am very glad to
see you. Curiously enough, I thought of going down to call on you this
afternoon. I wanted to have a talk with you. I dare say you have come up
to consult me.'

Hyacinth was astonished. How could anyone have guessed what he came
about? Had Marion told her father already?

'It is a sad business,' the Canon went on--' very distressing and
perplexing indeed. But so far as you personally are concerned,
Conneally, I cannot regard it as an unmixed misfortune. You were meant
for something better, if I may say so, than selling blankets. Now, I
have a plan for your future, which I talked over last week with an old
friend of yours. Now that somethin