Eventually he came; he even preached once more in the old familiar pulpit at the invitation of the vicar, who had not treated him too well. On the Saturday evening before preaching, he said to Constance:
“Once I was eager to persuade you to come to church to hear me; will you think it strange if I ask you not to come on this occasion?”
“Why?” she returned, looking anxiously at him. “Do you mean that you are going to make some allusion to—”
“No, Constance. But my discourse will be about my life at the East End of London, and what I have seen there. I shall talk not of ancient things but of the present—that sad present we both know. You can realise it all so vividly—it will be painful to you.”
“I had made up my mind to go. Thank you for warning me, but I shall go all the same.”
“I am glad.”
“You must not jump to any conclusions, Harold,” she said, glancing at him.
“No,” he replied, and went away with a shadow on his face that was scarcely a shadow.
After all, she was able to listen to his sermon with outward calm. But it was a happiness to Mrs. Churton when Wood End House sent so large a contingent of worshippers to the village church, where the pew in which she had sat alone on so many Sundays—poor Mr. Churton's increasing ailments having prevented him from accompanying her—was so well filled. Glancing about her, as was her custom, to note which of her poor were present and which absent, she was surprised to see the carpenter Cawood, with his wife and little ones, his eyes resting on the young girl at her side, and it made her glad to think that she had not perhaps angled in vain for this catcher of silly fish.
The curate had not been long in the village before Tom Starbrow appeared and established himself at the “Eyethorne Inn”; but most of his time was spent at Wood End House, and in long drives and rambles with his sister and Fan. Then had come the migration to Sidmouth, Tom and the curate accompanying the ladies. Shortly afterwards Fan heard from her brother; he was back in London, and proposed running down to pay her a visit. It was a pleasant letter he wrote, and she had no fear of meeting him now; he had recovered from his madness, or, to put it another way, from a feeling that was not convenient.