"Enough!" says Gwendoline, taking it in this sense; "and, since you have been candid with me, I'll repay you in the same coin. But, mind you, it mustn't go further."
"Oh! certainly not," assents the other, in her restored confidence about the curate willing to promise anything in the world.
"As I've said," proceeds Miss Wynn, "there are worse men in the world than George Shenstone, and but few better. Certainly none behind hounds, and I'm told he's the crack shot of the county, and the best billiard player of his club--all accomplishments that have weight with us women--some of us. More still; he's deemed good-looking, and is, as you say, known to be of good family and fortune. For all, he lacks one thing that's wanted by----"
She stays her speech till dipping the oars--their splash, simultaneous with, and half-drowning, the words, "Gwen Wynn."
"What is it?" asks Ellen, referring to the deficiency thus hinted at.
"On my word, I can't tell--for the life of me I cannot. It's something undefinable; which one feels without seeing or being able to explain--just as ether, or electricity. Possibly it is the last. At all events, it's the thing that makes us women fall in love; as no doubt you've found when your fingers were--were--well, so near being pricked by that holly. Ha, ha, ha!"
With a merry peal she once more sets to rowing; and for a time no speech passes between them, the only sounds heard being the songs of the birds, in sweet symphony with the rush of the water along the boat's sides, and the rumbling of the oars in their rowlocks.
But for a brief interval is their silence between them, Miss Wynn again breaking it by a startled exclamation:--
"Up yonder! We've been talking of kites and magpies. Behold, two birds of worse augury than either!"
They are passing the mouth of a little influent stream, up which at some distance are seen two men, one of them seated in a small boat, the other standing on the bank talking down to him. He in the boat is a stout, thick-set fellow in velveteens and coarse fur cap, the one above a spare thin man, habited in a suit of black--of clerical, or rather sacerdotal, cut. Though both are partially screened by the foliage, the little stream running between wooded banks, Miss Wynn has recognised them. So, too, does the companion; who rejoins, as if speaking to herself--
