The day after his arrival he joined the Gilroyd ladies as they left the Rectory, where—for the great law of change and succession is at work continually and everywhere—the Mainwarings were no more, and good old Doctor Wagget was now installed, and beginning to unpack and get his books into their shelves, and he and old Miss Wagget were still nodding, and kissing their hands, and smiling genially on the door-steps on their departing visitors.
Just here Vane Trevor lighted upon them. How lovely Miss Violet Darkwell looked! Was not that a blush, or only the rosy shadow under her bonnet?
“A blush, by Jove!” thought Vane Trevor, and he felt as elated as, a few weeks before, he would have been had he got a peerage.
So they stopped in a little group on the road under the parsonage trees; and, the usual greeting accomplished, the young man accompanied them on their way toward Gilroyd, and said he—
“I looked in the other day, on my way back from Lowton, on my cousins, the Kincton Knoxes, at Kincton, you know, and, by Jove! I met—who do you think?”
“I haven’t an idea,” replied Miss Darkwell, to whom he had chiefly addressed himself.
“Anne Dowlass, I dare say, my roguish, runaway little girl,” suggested Miss Perfect, inquisitively.
“Oh, no! not a girl,” answered Trevor.
“Well, it was the Bishop of Shovel-on-Headley,” said she firmly.
“No; by Jove! I don’t think you’d guess in half an hour. Upon my honour! He! he! he! Well, what do you think of Maubray?”