"That was not all," said the Rector, following her to the door. "It is said that this sort of thing has been habitual, my dear. He takes the 'Evening Mail,' you know, all to himself, instead of having the 'Times' like other people, and she carries it down to his house, and I hear of meetings in the garden, and a great deal that is very objectionable," said Mr Morgan, speaking very fast in order to deliver himself before the advent of Mr Leeson. "I'm afraid it is a very bad business. I don't know what to do about it. I suppose I must ask Leeson to stay to dinner? It is absurd of him to come at six o'clock."
"Meetings in the garden?" said Mrs Morgan, aghast. "I don't feel as if I could believe it. There is that tiresome man at last. Do as you like, dear, about asking him to stay; but I must make my escape," and the Rector's wife hastened up-stairs, divided between vexation about Mr Leeson and regret at the news she had just heard. She put on her dress rather hastily, and was conscious of a little ill-temper, for which she was angry with herself; and the haste of her toilette, and the excitement under which she laboured, aggravated unbecomingly that redness of which Mrs Morgan was painfully sensible. She was not at all pleased with her own appearance as she looked in the glass. Perhaps that sense of looking not so well as usual brought back to her mind a troublesome and painful idea, which recurred to her not unfrequently when she was in any trouble. The real Rector to whom she was married was so different from the ideal one who courted her; could it be possible, if they had married in their youth instead of now, that her husband would have been less open to the ill-natured suggestions of the gossips in Carlingford, and less jealous of the interferences of his young neighbour? It was hard to think that all the self-denial and patience of the past had done more harm than good; but though she was conscious of his defects, she was very loyal to him, and resolute to stand by him whatever he might do or say; though Mrs Morgan's "womanly instincts," which the Rector had quoted, were all on Mr Wentworth's side, and convinced her of his innocence to start with. On the whole, she was annoyed and uncomfortable; what with Mr Leeson's intrusion (which had occurred three or four times before, and which Mrs Morgan felt it her duty to check) and the Rector's uncharitableness, and her own insufficient time to dress, and the disagreeable heightening of her complexion, the Rector's wife felt in rather an unchristian frame of mind. She did not look well, and she did not feel better. She was terribly civil to the Curate when she went down-stairs, and snubbed him in the most unqualified way when he too began to speak about Mr Wentworth. "It does not seem to me to be at all a likely story," she said, courageously, and took away Mr Leeson's breath.