“You think the young lady is communicating—”
“With another party? I do. Leastways I know it. And the party——”
“Is Walterson?”
“Just so,” the runner answered. “Why not? Young ladies are but women, after all, reverend sir, and much like other women, only sometimes more so. I began, I confess, by being of your way of thinking. The lady is so precious snowy and so precious stiff you would not believe ice would melt in her mouth. But when I came to think it all over, and remembered how she stood by it at first, and would not give her name, nor any clue by which we could trace where she came from—so that till Captain Clyne turned up I was altogether at a loss—and how she made light of what Walterson had done, when it was first told her, and a lot of little things like that, I began to see how the land lay, innocent as she looks. And after all, come to think of it, if she liked the man well enough to go off with him—why should she cut him adrift? When she had, so to speak, paid the price for him, your reverence? How does that strike you?”
“But Captain Clyne,” Sutton answered slowly, “who knew her well, and knows her well——”
“I know.”
“He does not share your opinion. He is under the belief,” the chaplain continued, “that her eyes are open. And that she hates the very thought of the man, and of the mistake she made. His view is that she is only anxious to behave herself.”
Bishop winked. “Ay, but Captain Clyne,” he said, “is in love with her, you see.”
Mr. Sutton stared. The colour rose slowly to his cheeks.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “In fact, I may say I know that it is not so. He has long given up the remotest idea of the—of the match that was projected.”