"I say--are you there? I want to speak to you," said Mr Wentworth.
"Yes," said the stranger, turning sharply round. "I am here, a dog without a name. What have you got to say?"
"Only that you must be more careful," said Mr Wentworth again, with a little stiffness. "You will be recognised if you don't mind. I have just been asked who you were by--somebody who thought he had seen you before."
"Well, by Mr Wodehouse," said the Curate. "I may as well tell you; if you mean to keep up this concealment you must take care."
"By Jove!" said the stranger, and then he whistled a few bars of the air which Mr Wentworth's arrival had interrupted. "What is a fellow to do?" he said, after an interjection. "I sometimes think I had better risk it all--eh! don't you think so? I can't shut myself up for ever here."
"That must be as you think best," said the Perpetual Curate, in whom there appeared no movement of sympathy; and he said no more, though the doubtful individual by his side lifted an undecided look to his face, and once more murmured in perplexed tones a troubled exclamation: "A man must have a little amusement somehow," the stranger said, with an aggrieved voice; and then abruptly left his unsociable companion, and went off to his room, where he summoned Sarah to bring lights, and tried to talk to her a little in utter dearth of society. Mr Wentworth stayed behind, pacing up and down the darkening walk. The Curate's thoughts were far from satisfactory. There was not much comfort anywhere, let him look where he pleased. When a man has no spot in all his horizon on which his eye can rest with comfort, there is something more discouraging in the prospect than a positive calamity. He could not take refuge even in the imaginations of his love, for it was clear enough that already a sentiment of surprise had risen in Lucy's mind, and her tranquillity was shaken. And perhaps he had done rashly to plunge into other people's troubles--he upon whom a curious committee of aunts were now to sit _en permanence_. He went in to write his sermon, far from being so assured of things in general as that discourse was when it was written, though it was a little relief to his mind to fall back upon an authority somewhere, and to refer, in terms which were perhaps too absolute to be altogether free of doubt, to the Church, which had arranged everything for her children in one department of their concerns at least. If it were only as easy to know what ought to be done in one's personal affairs as to decide what was the due state of mind expected by the Church on the second Sunday after Easter! But being under that guidance, at least he could not go wrong in his sermon, which was one point of ease amid the many tribulations of the Curate of St Roque's.
