“Too gay, Sophia, and too handsome. So Mr. Herrick and Colonel Harcourt not to speak of that pitiable person, Mr. Villars, seem to find her. She appears to me to take their admiration with rather more ease than is perhaps altogether wise in a young woman in her position. I do not say,” he went on, bearing down the lady’s horrified exclamation—“I do not go so far as yourself in surmising that David had formed any serious attachment in that quarter; but then, you see, it might have ripened into one. There is no doubt there was a singular air of peace and happiness about Bindon before this most undesirable influx. But last night David’s eyes——” He broke off, readied for his cane and moved towards the porch.
“My dear sir,” panted Madam Tutterville after him, “you have plunged me in very deep anxiety! We seem indeed, as Paul says, to be going from Scyllis to Charybda! Pray proceed with your sentence—David’s eyes?”
But the parson had already repented.
“Nay, it is after all but a small matter. All I mean is that this noise, this wrangling, this frivolity, this trivial mirth, which is, after all, but the crackling of thorns, is peculiarly distasteful to such a man as David, and I was only sorry that your niece should seem to countenance it.”
“I will speak to her,” announced Madam Tutterville. “I will instantly seek her.”
“Nay,” said her lord, “my dear Sophia, here we have no right to interfere. Ellinor has sufficient experience of the world to be left to her own devices. I understand that Colonel Harcourt and Mr. Herrick are neither of them a mean parti, and, unless I am seriously mistaken, the younger man at least is genuinely enamoured. By what right can we permit our own secret wishes, our own rather wild match-making plans, to step in here?”
“Oh, dear!” sighed Sophia. “And we were so comfortable!”
The two stood arm-in-arm at the lych-gate and absently watched the last of their parishioners straggling homeward in groups through the avenue trees. Suddenly Madam Tutterville touched her husband’s arm and pointed with a dramatic gesture in the direction of the House.
Two tall slight figures were moving side by side across the sunlit green. Even as the rector looked a third, emerging from the shadows of the beeches, joined them with sweeping gestures of greeting.
“They have been, I declare, lying in wait for Ellinor ... and there she goes off between them, Sunday morning and all!”