‘How is this, Wyndham?’ asks he quietly, yet with unmistakable indignation.
‘How is what?’ asks the young man a little haughtily.
‘Was it you who took Susan into that cottage?’
‘No; but even if it had been, I see no cause for the tone you have assumed towards me.’
‘That is what I suppose you call “carrying it off,”’ says the Rector, his pale face betraying a fine disgust.
‘Mr. Barry!’ says Wyndham, as if the other had struck him.
He has flushed a dark red, and now turns as if to walk straight away up the road and out of the Rector’s ken for ever. But suddenly he halts and looks back, and Mr. Barry, who has seen many phases of life and is quick to discern the truth, however deep in the well it lies, beckons to him to return. If this young man cannot clear himself, he may still plead circumstances.
‘If you could explain, Wyndham.’
‘That’s what offends me,’ says Wyndham, with some passion. He has refused to return an inch, so the Rector has had to go to him. It wouldn’t do to shout his conversation, considering all the young people who live on one side of the road behind the right-hand wall, and the one ‘young person’ (the Rector has the gravest suspicions) who lives on the other side of it. What if they should all chance to hear?
Wyndham is still talking.