She did not reply, so he continued urging.  “If it’s because you’re stuck up, it must have been those poor English Rexfords put it into your head, for you couldn’t have had such ideas before you came here.  Now, if that’s the barrier between us, I can tell you it needn’t stand, for I could have one of those two pretty young ladies of theirs quick as not.  If I said ’Come, my dear, let’s go off by train and get married, and ask your father’s blessing after,’ she’d come.”

“How dare you tell me such a falsehood!” Eliza rose magnificently.

“Oh,” said he, “I meet them occasionally.”

She looked at him in utter disdain.  She did not believe him; it was only a ruse to attract her.

“How do you know,” she asked fiercely, “what ideas I could have had or not before I went to the Rexfords?”

“That’s a part of what I was going to say next”—­she sat down again—­“but I don’t want to hurt you, mind.  I’d make it real easy for you if you’d let me cherish you.”

“What have you to say?”

“Just this—­that it’ll all have to come out some time; you know to what I allude.”

She did not look as if she knew.

“Upon my word!” he ejaculated admiringly, “you do beat all.”

“Well, what are you talking of?” she asked.

“In this world or the next, all you’ve done will be made public, you know,” he replied, not without tone of menace.  “But what I want to speak about now is Father Cameron.  I’ve got him here, and I’ve never regretted the bread and shelter I give him, for he’s a real nice old gentleman; but I can’t help him going to people’s houses and putting ideas into their heads—­no more than the wind, I can’t keep him.  He’s crazed, poor old gentleman, that’s what he is.”

“You ought never to have brought him here.”

“You’d rather he’d been stoned in Quebec streets?” He looked at her steadily.  “It’s because they all more than half believe that he got his ideas when dead, and then came to life again, that he gets into harm.  If it wasn’t for that tale against him he’d not have been hurt in Quebec, and he’d not be believed by the folks here.”

“I thought you believed that too.”

He gave her a peculiar smile.  “If you was to say right out now in public that you knew he wasn’t the man they take him for, but only a poor maniac who don’t know who he is himself, you’d put an end to the most part of his influence.”

“What do I know about it?” she asked scornfully; but, in haste to divert him from an answer, she went on, “I don’t see that he does any harm, any way.  You say yourself he’s as good as can be.”

“So he is, poor gentleman; but he’s mad, and getting madder.  I don’t know exactly what’s brewing, but I tell you this, there’s going to be trouble of some sort before long.”

“What sort?”

“Well, for one thing, drunken Job is calling out in the rum-hole that he’ll kill his wife if he finds her up to any more religious nonsense; and she is up to something of that sort, and he’s quite able to do it, too.  I heard him beating her the other night.”