"No; not so much of it even as you have heard. Now, look here, Cora, you think it inconsistent perhaps that I should have brought this woman to Rockhold years ago to become your governess, and now, when she is my father's wife, object to your intimacy with her. In the first instance she has been far, very far, 'more sinned against than sinning;' she had been very imprudent, that was all. She was really the wife, by Scotch law, of the boy she ran away with and then lost. I saw nothing in her case that ought to prevent her entrance into a respectable family, and Heaven knows I pitied her and tried to save her by bringing her to Rockhold. I saved her only for a few years. After she left us—but there, I cannot tell you that story! You must not be intimate with her."
"Yet she is my grandfather's wife!"
"An irreparable misfortune. I can't expose her life to him; such a blow to his pride might be his death, at his age. No! events must take their course; but I hope he will not take her to any place where she is likely to be recognized. Nor do I think he will. He is aging fast, and will be likely to live quietly at Rockhold."
"And I think she also would avoid such risks. She was terribly frightened when she recognized the Dean of Olivet. Was he really her stepfather, the once poor curate?"
"Yes. You see while they were lionizing him in the Eastern cities, his portrait, with a short biographical notice, was published in one of the illustrated weeklies, where I read of him, and identified him by comparing notes with what I had heard."
"How came he to rise so high?"
"Oh, he was a learned divine and eloquent orator. He was well connected, too. It would seem that a very few months after his step-daughter's flight he was inducted into that rich living for which he had been waiting so many years. From that position his rise was slow indeed, covering a period of twenty years, until a few months ago, when he was made Dean of Olivet."
"To think that a man capable of quarreling with his wife and ill-using their step-child should fill so sacred a position in the church!" exclaimed Cora.
"Yes; but you see, my dear, the church is his profession, not his vocation. He is a brilliant pulpit orator, with influential friends; but every brilliant pulpit orator is not necessarily a saint. And as for his quarreling with his wife and ill-using their step-daughter, we have heard but one side of that story."
When they entered the Rockhold drawing room they found Mrs. Rockharrt alone. She arose and came forward and received them with a smile.