There was a pause which Anne did not break. She sat quite still, looking into the fire.
“I need not say,” pursued the Vicar stiffly, “that though I was constrained to offer an apology to Madame Didier for my somewhat intemperate letter, I repeated my warning to her with regard to the danger of spreading this story.”
“Thank you,” said Anne again.
The Vicar moved uncomfortably.
“Under any other circumstances—had Madame Didier, I mean, merely reported gossip or hearsay, I should immediately have come to you for an explanation, and I should have accepted your bare word against what might to others appear grave suspicion. But unfortunately, as I said, her evidence is incontrovertible. I have seen letters. In short, to put it plainly, Miss Page, to ask for an explanation from you would be the merest farce. It therefore becomes my painful duty——”
“An explanation of what?” asked Anne, turning to him with a deliberate movement, and again the Vicar fidgeted under her gaze.
“Of—of—a mode of life which proves you to have been unworthy of the position you have held in our midst.”
The Vicar gathered himself together; it was time for the peroration, and from force of habit his voice grew full and deep. He reminded himself vigorously of the sanctity of the home, the preservation of the family, and in sonorous tones continued——
“You have been loved and trusted by pure and innocent women. You have been esteemed as a friend by myself, as well as by many another upright and honourable man. And I say it with pain, you have deceived us. My own child has made you her confidante——”
Anne rose, and the stream of the Vicar’s eloquence suddenly ran dry.