“Yes,” said Agnes, who knew nothing else to say.
“For myself,” said Mr Endicott solemnly, “I rejoice to find the poetic gift alike in the palace of the peer and the cottage of the peasant, bringing home to all hearts the experiences of life; in the sumptuous apartments of the Hall with Mrs Edgerley, or in the humble parlour of the worthy and respectable middle class—Miss Atheling, with you.”
“Oh!” cried Agnes, starting under this sudden blow, and parrying it with all the skill she could find. “Do you like Oxford, Mr Endicott? Have you seen much of the country about here?”
But it was too late. Mr Endicott caught a shy backward glance of Marian, and, smothering a mortal jealousy of Louis, eagerly thrust himself forward to answer it—and the Rector had caught his unfortunate words. The Rector drew himself up to a still more lofty height, if that was possible, and walked on by Agnes’s side in a solemn and stately silence—poor Agnes, who would have revived a little in his presence but for that arrow of Mr Endicott’s, not knowing whether to address him, or whether her best policy was to be silent. She went on by his side, holding down her head, looking very small, very slight, very young, beside that dignified and stately personage. At last he himself condescended to speak.
“Am I to understand, Miss Atheling,” said the Rector, very much in the same tone as he might have asked poor little Billy Morrell at school, “Are you the boy who robbed John Parker’s orchard?”—“Am I to understand, as I should be disposed to conclude from what this person says, that, like my fashionable cousin at the Hall, you have written novels?—or is it only the hyperbole of that individual’s ordinary speech?”
“No,” said Agnes, very guilty, a convicted culprit, yet making bold to confess her guilt. “I am very sorry he said it, but it is true; only I have written just one novel. Do you think it wrong?”
“I think a woman’s intellect ought to be receptive without endeavouring to produce,” said the Rector, in a slightly acerbated tone. “Intelligence is the noblest gift of a woman; originality is neither to be wished nor looked for.”
“I do not suppose I am very guilty of that either,” said Agnes, brightening again with that odd touch of pugnacity, as she listened once more to this haughty tone of dogmatism from the man who held no opinions. “If you object only to originality, I do not think you need be angry with me.”
She was half inclined to play with the lion, but the lion was in a very ill humour, and would see no sport in the matter. To tell the truth, the Rector was very much fretted by this unlooked-for intelligence. He felt as if it were done on purpose, and meant as a personal offence to him, though really, after all, for a superior sister of St Frideswide, this unfortunate gift of literature was rather a recommendation than otherwise, as one might have thought.
So the Rev. Lionel Rivers stalked on beside Agnes past his own door, following Louis, Marian, and Mr Endicott to the very gate of the Old Wood Lodge. Then he took off his hat to them all, wished them a ceremonious good-night, and went home extremely wrathful, and in a most unpriestly state of mind. He could not endure to think that the common outer world had gained such a hold upon that predestined Superior of the sisters of St Frideswide.