"'Denn, was man schwarz auf weiss besitzt,
Kann man getrost nach Hause tragen'"!
Of course she knew that Dr Dudley alone would understand, and of course Dudley keenly appreciated the apt quotation.
"Holloa, Stuart!" he said, "you seem to be figuring in a new and alarming rôle. I am half afraid to go in with you. I wish you could come and join in our discussion, Miss Maclean. 'Nineteenth Century Heretics' is our topic. Stuart takes the liberal side, I the conservative."
"Do you think it expedient," said the minister reproachfully, as the two men crunched the gravel of the carriage-drive beneath their feet, "to talk in that flippant way to women on deep subjects?"
"Oh, Miss Maclean is all right! She could knock you and me into a cocked-hat any day."
And he believed what he said—at least so far as the minister was concerned.
"She really is very intelligent," admitted Mr Stuart. "I quite miss her face when she is not at church on Sunday morning; but you know she does put herself forward a little. What made her go out after that fainting girl, when so many older women were present? Oh, I forgot, you had not arrived——"
"It was well for the fainting girl that she did," interrupted Dudley calmly. "When I was going to the vestry some one rushed frantically against me, and told me a woman had fainted. I arrived on the scene a moment after Miss Maclean, but fortunately she did not see me. By Jingo, Stuart, that girl can rise to an occasion! If ever your chapel is crowded, and takes fire, you may pray that Miss Maclean may be one of the congregation."
It gave him a curious pleasure to talk like this, but he would not have trusted himself to say so much, had it not been for the friendly darkness, and the noise of the gravel beneath their feet.
Mr Stuart suspected nothing. Dr Dudley and Rachel Simpson's cousin! People would have been very slow to link their names.