“No, Hartley. It is impossible.”
She kissed his forehead, and the breakfast was finished in silence—supposed to be finished. It had really ended when Leo Salis quitted the room.
It was about an hour later that as the Reverend Hartley Salis was hard at work over his sermon, striving his best to keep out college lore, and to write in language that the Duke’s Hampton villagers could easily understand, that he came to the sentence following—
“Now a man’s duty, my friends—and a woman’s”—he added parenthetically.
“Now, what shall I tell them a man’s duty is—and a woman’s?”
That required thought, and he laid down his pen, rose, and walked to the study window, to look out on the pleasant landscape; beautiful still, though not in the most goodly time of year.
“Obedience!” he cried angrily, for just passing out of the little rustic gate at the bottom of the Rectory grounds he saw his sister Leo.
She was in hat and cloak. Her movements were rapid, and the furtive look she darted back told tales.
“No,” said the curate; “it would be spying. I cannot.”
“It is your duty,” something seemed to whisper to him.