The Vicar has sat during this visitation in an attitude of hopeless depression, and has given out, with an intense feeling born of the excessive appositeness of the words to his own case, the hymn after the sermon—
'Art thou weary,art thou languid?'
Peggy sits alone in her pew, and her mind straying away from the fledgeling curate's flounderings, she asks herself sadly for how many more Sundays will this be so?
Mrs. Evans overtakes her as she walks down the path after service, to tell her that she and her whole family are to set forth on the following Tuesday in pursuit of that change for which she has been so long sighing.
'Mr. Evans is off on his own account!' cries she in cheerful narration. 'He does not like travelling with so large a party; it fidgets him, so he is off on his own account. The Archdeacon wanted him to go with him to the Diocesan Conference; but, as he justly says, what he needs to recruit him is an entire change of ideas as well as scene. So he is going to run over to Trouville or Deauville, or one of those French watering-places.'
'Indeed!'
'It seems very unkind of us—I am so sorry that we are leaving you here alone,' pursues Mrs. Evans, her elated eye and tone giving the lie to her regretful words. 'And they tell me that you are to lose milady too; she talks of a month at Brighton. She does not much fancy being at the Manor at the fall of the leaf.'
'Thank you,' replies Peggy civilly; 'but we never mind being by ourselves.'
'Oh, I know that you do not in a general way,' returns Mrs. Evans. 'But of course just now it is different; Prue so far from well. I only thought—I was only afraid—in case——'
'In case what?' asks Peggy curtly, while a cold hand seems crawling up towards her heart.