"How do you mean?" demanded Reginald, now once more irritated.
"You have seemed restless, unsettled, and unhappy, for some two or three weeks past, sir," answered the housekeeper, wiping away a tear from her eye. "And then you are not so regular in your habits as you were: you go out and come in oftener;—sometimes you stay out till very late; at others you come home, send me up to bed, and say that you yourself are going to rest;—nevertheless, I hear you about the house——"
"Nonsense!" ejaculated Reginald, struck by the imprudence of which he had been guilty in admitting Lady Cecilia into his abode. "Do not make yourself unhappy, Mrs. Kenrick: nothing ails me, I can assure you. But—tell me," he added, half afraid to ask the question; "have you heard any one else remark—I mean, make any observation—that is, speak as you do about me——"
"Well, sir, if you wish for the truth," returned the housekeeper, "I must say that the clerk questioned me yesterday morning about you."
"The clerk!" ejaculated Reginald; "and what did he say?"
"Oh? he merely thought that you had something on your mind—some annoyance which worried you——"
"He is an impertinent fellow!" cried the rector, thrown off his guard by the alarming announcement that a change in his behaviour had been observed.
"He only speaks out of kindness, sir—as I do," observed the housekeeper, with a deep sigh.
"Well, well, Mrs. Kenrick," said the rector, vexed at his own impatience: "I was wrong to mistrust the excellence of his motives. To tell the truth, I have had some little cause of vexation—the loss of a large sum—through the perfidy of a pretended friend—and——"
The rector floundered in the midst of his falsehood; but the old housekeeper readily believed him, and was rejoiced to think that he had at length honoured her with his confidence in respect to the cause of that restlessness which she had mistaken for a secret grief.