“That is being an honourable woman,” he said, and Rose’s return ended the exchange of speculations; but it must be confessed that at their next meeting Ermine’s look of suppressed inquiry quite compensated for her previous banter, more especially as neither had he any confidence to reveal or conceal, only the tidings that the riders, whose coalition had justified Lady Temple’s prudence, had met Mr. Touchett wandering in the lanes in the twilight, apparently without a clear idea of what he was doing there.  And on the next evening there was quite an excitement, the curate looked so ill, and had broken quite down when he was practising with the choir boys before church; he had, indeed, gone safely through the services, but at school he had been entirely at a loss as to what Sunday it was, and had still more unfortunately forgotten that to be extra civil to Miss Villars was the only hope of retaining her services, for he had walked by her with less attention than if she had been the meanest scholar.  Nay, when his most faithful curatolatress had offered to submit to him a design for an illumination for Christmas, he had escaped from her with a desperate and mysterious answer that he had nothing to do with illumination, he hoped it would be as sombre as possible.

No wonder Avonmouth was astonished, and that guesses were not confined to Mackarel Lane.

“Well, Colin,” said Ermine, on the Tuesday, “I have had a first-hand confidence, though from a different quarter.  Poor Mr. Touchett came to announce his going away.”

“Going!”

“Yes.  In the very nick of time, it seems, Alick Keith has had a letter from his uncle’s curate, asking him to see if he could meet with a southern clergyman to exchange duties for the winter with a London incumbent who has a delicate wife, and of course.  Mr. Touchett jumped at it.”

“A very good thing—­a great relief.”

“Yes.  He said he was very anxious for work, but he had lost ground in this place within the last few months, and he thought that he should do better in a fresh place, and that a fresh person would answer better here, at least for a time.  I am very sorry for him, I have a great regard for him.”

“Yes; but he is quite right to make a fresh beginning.  Poor man! he has been quite lifted off his feet, and entranced all this time, and his recovery will be much easier elsewhere.  It was all that unlucky croquet.”

“I believe it was.  I think there was at first a reverential sort of distant admiration, too hopeless to do any one any harm, and that really might have refined him, and given him a little of the gentleman-like tone he has always wanted.  But then came the croquet, and when it grew to be a passion it was an excuse for intimacy that it would have taken a stronger head than his to resist.”

“Under the infection of croquet fever.”

“It is what my father used to say of amusements—­the instant they become passions they grow unclerical and do mischief.  Now he used, though not getting on with the Curtises, to be most successful with the second-rate people; but he has managed to offend half of them during this unhappy mania, which, of course, they all resent as mercenary, and how he is ever to win them back I don’t know.  After all, curatocult is a shallow motive—­Rachel Curtis might triumph!”