she was prepared to resent any assumption of clerical familiarity with her; and so, in my behaviour, any poor innocent “bush was supposed a bear.”  For I need not tell my reader that nothing was farther from my intention, even with the lowliest of my flock, than to presume upon my position as clergyman.  I think they all gave me the relation I occupied towards them personally.—­But I had never seen her look so haughty as now.  If I had been watching her very thoughts she could hardly have looked more indignant.

“I beg your pardon,” I said, distressed; “I have startled you dreadfully.”

“Not in the least,” she replied, but without moving, and still with a curve in her form like the neck of a frayed horse.

I thought it better to leave apology, which was evidently disagreeable to her, and speak of indifferent things.

“I was on my way to call on Mr Stoddart,” I said.

“You will find him at home, I believe.”

“I fancied you and Mrs Oldcastle in London.”

“We returned yesterday.”

Still she stood as before.  I made a movement in the direction of the house.  She seemed as if she would walk in the opposite direction.

“May I not walk with you to the house?”

“I am not going in just yet.”

“Are you protected enough for sucn a night?”

“I enjoy the wind.”

I bowed and walked on; for what else could I do?

I cannot say that I enjoyed leaving her behind me in the gathering dark, the wind blowing her about with no more reverence than if she had been a bush of privet.  Nor was it with a light heart that I bore her repulse as I slowly climbed the hill to the house.  However, a little personal mortification is wholesome—­though I cannot say either that I derived much consolation from the reflection.

Sarah opened the glass door, her black, glossy, restless eyes looking out of her white face from under gray eyebrows.  I knew at once by her look beyond me that she had expected to find me accompanied by her young mistress.  I did not volunteer any information, as my reader may suppose.

I found, as I had feared, that, although Mr. Stoddart seemed to listen with some interest to what I said, I could not bring him to the point of making any practical suggestion, or of responding to one made by me; and I left him with the conviction that he would do nothing to help me.  Yet during the whole of our interview he had not opposed a single word I said.  He was like clay too much softened with water to keep the form into which it has been modelled.  He would take some kind of form easily, and lose it yet more easily.  I did not show all my dissatisfaction, however, for that would only have estranged us; and it is not required, nay, it may be wrong, to show all you feel or think:  what is required of us is, not to show what we do not feel or think; for that is to be false.