There was a pause. Herbert Tanerton, who had been fidgeting in his chair, spoke:
“Am I mistaken in assuming that your acceptance of this chaplaincy depends upon Miss Rymer?”
“No, you are not mistaken,” said Sale, readily. “It does depend upon her. If she will go with me—my wife—I shall accept it; if she will not, I remain at home.”
“Margaret is as nice as her father was; she is exactly like him,” I said. “Were I you, Mr. Sale, I should just take her out of the place and end it.”
“But if she won’t come with me?” returned he, with a half-smile.
“She is wanted at home,” observed Herbert Tanerton, casting a severe look at me with his cold light eyes. “That shop could not get on without her.” But Sale interrupted:
“I cannot imagine why the son is not at home to attend to things. It is his place to be there doing it, not his sister’s. He is inclined to be wild, it is said, and given to roving.”
“Wildness is not Benjamin Rymer’s worst fault, or roving either,” cried the Rector, in his hardest voice, though he dropped it to a low key. And forthwith he opened the ball, and told the unfortunate story in a very few words. I let the tongs fall with a rattle.
“I would not have mentioned this,” pursued he, “but that I consider it lies in my duty to tell you of it. To any one else it would never be allowed to pass my lips; it never has passed them since Mr. Rymer disclosed it to me a day or two before he died. Margaret Rymer may be desirable in herself; but there’s her position, and—there’s this. It is for your own sake I have spoken, Mr. Sale.”
Sale had sat still and quiet while he listened. There was nothing outward to show that the tale affected him, but instinct told me that it did. Just a question or two he put, as to the details, and then he rose to leave.