Mrs. Ramshorn led the way to the dining-room, where the early Sunday dinner was already laid, and the decanters stood on the sideboard.  The rector poured himself out a large glass of sherry, and drank it off in three mouthfuls.

“Such buffoonery! such coarseness! such vulgarity! such indelicacy!” cried Mrs. Ramshorn, while the parson was still occupied with the sherry.  “Not content with talking about himself in the pulpit, he must even talk about his wife!  What’s he or his wife in the house of God?  When his gown is on, a clergyman is neither Mr. This nor Mr. That any longer, but a priest of the Church of England, as by law established.  My poor Helen!  She has thrown herself away upon a charlatan!  And what will become of her money in the hands of a man with such leveling notions, I dread to think.”

“He said something about buying friends with it,” said the rector.

“Bribery and corruption must come natural to a fellow who could preach a sermon like that after marrying money!”

“Why, my good madam, would you have a man turn his back on a girl because she has a purse in her pocket?”

“But to pretend to despise it!  And then, worst of all!  I don’t know whether the indelicacy or the profanity was the greater!—­when I think of it now, I can scarcely believe I really heard it!—­to offer to show his books to every inquisitive fool itching to know my niece’s fortune!  Well, she shan’t see a penny of mine—­that I’m determined on.”

“You need not be uneasy about the books, Mrs. Ramshorn.  You remember the condition annexed?”

“Stuff and hypocrisy!  He’s played his game well!  But time will show.”

Mr. Bevis checked his answer.  He was beginning to get disgusted with the old cat, as he called her to himself.

He too had made a good speculation in the hymeneo-money-market, otherwise he could hardly have afforded to give up the exercise of his profession.  Mrs. Bevis had brought him the nice little property at Owlkirk, where, if he worshiped mammon—­and after his curate’s sermon he was not at all sure he did not—­he worshiped him in a very moderate and gentlemanly fashion.  Every body liked the rector, and two or three loved him a little.  If it would be a stretch of the truth to call a man a Christian who never yet in his life had consciously done a thing because it was commanded by Christ, he was not therefore a godless man; while, through the age-long process of spiritual infiltration, he had received and retained much that was Christian.

The ladies went to take off their bonnets, and their departure was a relief to the rector.  He helped himself to another glass of sherry, and seated himself in the great easy chair formerly approved of the dean, long promoted.  But what are easy chairs to uneasy men?  Dinner, however, was at hand, and that would make a diversion in favor of less disquieting thought.