When they came out into the pleasant evening air Mrs. Churton lingered a little, as was her custom, to exchange a few words with some of her friends, while Constance and Fan went slowly on for a short distance, and finally moved aside from the path on to the green turf. Here presently the curate joined them.
“I am glad you came, Miss Churton,” he spoke, pressing her hand. And after an interval of silence he added, “I hope I have not made you hate me for inflicting such a horribly dull discourse on you.”
“You should be the last person to say that,” she returned. “You might easily have made your sermon interesting—to me I mean; but I should not have thought better of you if you had done so.”
“Thanks for that. I am sometimes troubled with the thought that I made a mistake in going into the Church, and the doubt troubled me this evening when I was in the pulpit—more than it has ever done before.”
She made no reply to this speech until Fan moved a few feet away to read a half-obliterated inscription she had been vainly studying for a minute or two. Then she said, looking at him:
“I cannot imagine, Mr. Northcott, why you should select me to say this to.”
“Can you not? And yet I have a fancy that it would not be so very hard for you to find a reason. I have been accustomed to mix with people who read and think and write, and to discuss things freely with them, and I cannot forget for a single hour of my waking life that the old order has changed, and that we are drifting I know not whither. I do not wish to ignore this in the pulpit, and yet to avoid offending I am compelled to do so—to withdraw myself from the vexed present and look only at ancient things through ancient eyes. I know that you can understand and enter into that feeling, Miss Churton—you alone, perhaps, of all who came to church this evening; is it too much to look for a little sympathy from you in such a case?”
She had listened with eyes cast down, slowly swinging the end of her sunshade over the green grass blades.
“I do sympathise with you, Mr. Northcott,” she returned, “but at the same time I scarcely think you ought to expect it, unless it be out of gratitude for your kindness to me.”
“Gratitude! It hurts me to hear that word. I am glad, however, that you sympathise, but why ought I not to expect it? Will you tell me?”