"It is very sad," said Mrs. Clavering; "only think, it is but little more than a year since you married them!"
"And twelve such months as they have been for her!" said the Rector, shaking his head. His face was very lugubrious, for though as a parson he was essentially a kindly, easy man, to whom humbug was odious, and who dealt little in the austerities of clerical denunciation, still he had his face of pulpit sorrow for the sins of the people,—what I may perhaps call his clerical knack of gentle condemnation,—and could therefore assume a solemn look, and a little saddened motion of his head, with more ease than people who are not often called upon for such action.
"Poor woman!" said Fanny, thinking of the woman's married sorrows, and her early widowhood.
"Poor man," said Mary, shuddering as she thought of the husband's fate.
"I hope," said Harry, almost sententiously, "that no one in this house will condemn her upon such mere rumours as have been heard."
"Why should any one in this house condemn her," said the Rector, "even if there were more than rumours? My dears, judge not, lest ye be judged. As regards her, we are bound by close ties not to speak ill of her—or even to think ill, unless we cannot avoid it. As far as I know, we have not even any reason for thinking ill." Then he went out, changed the tone of his countenance among the rectory stables, and lit his cigar.
Three days after that a second note was brought down from the great house to the rectory, and this was from Lady Clavering to Harry. "Dear Harry," ran the note,—"Could you find time to come up to me this morning? Sir Hugh has gone to North Priory.—Ever yours, H. C." Harry, of course, went, and as he went, he wondered how Sir Hugh could have had the heart to go to North Priory at such a moment. North Priory was a hunting seat some thirty miles from Clavering, belonging to a great nobleman with whom Sir Hugh much consorted. Harry was grieved that his cousin had not resisted the temptation of going at such a time, but he was quick enough to perceive that Lady Clavering alluded to the absence of her lord as a reason why Harry might pay his visit to the house with satisfaction.
"I'm so much obliged to you for coming," said Lady Clavering. "I want to know if you can do something for me." As she spoke, she had a paper in her hand which he immediately perceived to be a letter from Italy.
"I'll do anything I can, of course, Lady Clavering."
"But I must tell you, that I hardly know whether I ought to ask you. I'm doing what would make Hugh very angry. But he is so unreasonable, and so cruel about Julia. He condemns her simply because, as he says, there is no smoke without fire. That is such a cruel thing to say about a woman;—is it not?"