"On a holiday?"
"No; he is going to resign his ministry here."
"What! Has he got a better offer from America?"
"Still so cruel to him," he said reprovingly. "He is resigning for conscience' sake."
"After all these years?" she queried sarcastically.
"Miss Ansell, you wrong him! He was not happy in his position. You were right so far. But he cannot endure his shackles any longer. And it is you who have inspired him to break them."
"I?" she exclaimed, startled.
"Yes, I told him why you had left Mrs. Henry Goldsmith's—it seemed to act like an electrical stimulus. Then and there he made me write a paragraph announcing his resignation. It will appear to-morrow."
Esther's eyes filled with soft light. She walked on in silence; then, noticing she had automatically walked too much in the direction of her place of concealment, she came to an abrupt stop.
"We must part here," she said. "If I ever come across my old shepherd in America, I will be nicer to him. It is really quite heroic of him—you must have exaggerated my own petty sacrifice alarmingly if it really supplied him with inspiration. What is he going to do in America?"