ck, and while we were talking I heard
you coming and so--and--so----"

"You got him out of the way in time! Then after I left he was here
again with you?"

"For a little while, just a little while."

Ringfield suddenly snatched her hands and bent his stern offended gaze
upon her.

"You have been hours with that man, hours--I know it. And to pretend
to me that there was no one there, while you allowed me to open my mind
and heart to you--the indignity of it, the smallness and vileness of
it; oh!--can not you see how I suffer in my pride for myself as well as
in my affection for you? As for the man, he knew no better, and I
suppose he wished for nothing better, than to listen and look, to watch
us, to spy----"

He choked with sorrowful wrath and temper; an access of jealous,
injured fury entirely possessed him for an instant, then with a great
effort, and an inward prayer, he partly regained his ministerial calm.

"You must see that I am right," he resumed; "he calls himself a
gentleman--you call him one; but is that a gentlemanly thing to do?
Gentleman? To stay here in hiding and let us talk on as we did! And
what does it signify that he is or has been 'an Oxford man'--the term
has no relevancy here, no meaning or sense whatever. Tell me this once
more, for I have grave doubts--has he any legal right over you?"

Pauline resolved to answer this question truthfully. How would
Ringfield accept the delicate distinction of a moral right involving
only those ties, those obligations, known to themselves and not to the
world?

"No," she said, firmly. Then a great burst of colour filled her face
as she continued. "But he should have had. Now you know. Now you
know all." And Ringfield, as almost any other man would have done,
mistakenly concluded that she was the unfortunate mother of the
unfortunate child in the distant parish, Angeel! In this, perhaps the
crucial moment of his whole existence, his manhood, his innate simple
strength, his reason and his faith, all wavered, tottered before him;
this experience, this knowledge of evil at first hand in the person of
one so dear, flamed round him like some hideous blast from the hot
furnace of an accepted hell, and he realized the terrors of things he
had read about and seen depicted--lost souls, dark and yet lurid pits
of destruction, misshapen beasts and angry angels--the blood flowed
from his arteries and from his stricken heart up to his frightened
brain,