"You may as well camp with me. Why not?"
Mark had several reasons "why not," but he gave one which was sufficient: "I mean to eat and sleep and work out-of-doors."
The two men talked together for an hour and then parted.
"By the way," said Jim, as Mark was taking leave, "the Squire is looking rather seedy. I fancy he's something on his mind. Are you going down to King's Charteris?"
Mark shook his head impatiently, hearing a terrible bleating; but as he passed through the Green Park, on the way to his lodgings, he reflected that he would have to go to Pitt Hall sooner or later. Why not sooner? He would run down the next day. Then, he repeated to himself what Jim Corrance had said about Archibald's sermons, and their effect on Betty. Looking back now, with an odd sense of detachment, he realised how much of these sermons had been his, how little Archibald's. For this he blamed himself. His brother had asked for an inch. He had given gladly an ell. But if—the possibility insisted on obtruding itself (an unwelcome guest)—if Betty discovered the truth, what would happen?
When he reached his lodging he wrote a letter to the Squire, saying that he was running down on the morrow and preparing him for a change of cloth.
"I no longer count myself of the Church of England" (he wrote), "but you will be doing the wise thing and the kind thing if you ask no questions."
This bolt from the blue fell on to the breakfast-table. Mrs. Samphire, like Archibald, jumped to the conclusion that Mark had gone over to Rome.
"I knew how it would be," she said acidly, "from the very beginning. I dare say he will arrive with his head shaved and wearing a cowl. And you were saying only yesterday that he could have the King's Charteris living, now that Archie is provided for."
"The boy is a good lad," said the Squire heavily. "I shall talk to him. He must take the King's Charteris living, he must. I shall make a point of it. He can keep a curate to preach. It's the obvious way out of the wood."