"Why, Emma," said the Rector, surprised, "I did not know you had seen him."
"I saw him outside the doors of the Entertainment Hall when the inquest was taking place. I happened to be passing on that day. Your father, my dear"--she addressed Claudia--"is a handsome man; but I should think he has a temper."
"He has," said the man's daughter, significantly. "Perhaps, if you knew my father you would not want me to marry Edwin."
"What nonsense. I love you for your own sweet sake. Your father will go back to Australia, I hope, and then we need not be bothered with him."
"Emma! Emma!"
"Well, I can't help it, George. After all, in trying to make Claudia marry that old man who died, Mr. Lemby did not behave very well."
"All the same, he is Claudia's father," said the Rector, reprovingly.
The girl flushed, and then turned rather pale, as she felt a trifle embarrassed during this discussion. If Mrs. Craver talked of her father in this way when he was absent, what would she say when he was present. The precise, refined little lady would never get on with the pirate, who was all that she was not.
Mrs. Craver, less observant than the Rector, accepted the reproof, although she did not notice Claudia's change of colour, and went on to make other remarks dealing with another subject.
"I only hope that Lady Wyke's example will not ruin the parish," she observed. "She is an extravagant woman, and you wouldn't know Maranatha now that she is living there. I'm sure when I called and saw the quantity of new furniture she has, and the silk curtains, and the fine pictures to say nothing of the many flowers and the expensive china, I thought how rich she must be."