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ht him."
"I can't imagine why he should have thought it necessary."
Mary colored brightly and suddenly, under the vivacity of the tone. Then she slipped her hand into her mother's.
"You didn't mind, dearest? Aunt Rose likes him very much, and--and I wanted him to know you!" She smiled into her mother's eyes. "But we needn't see him anymore if--"
Mrs. Elsmere interrupted her.
"I don't wish to be rude to any friend of Aunt Rose's," she said, rather stiffly. "But there is no need we should see him, is there?"
"No," said Mary; her cheek dropped against her mother's knee, her eyes on the water. "No--not that I know of." After a moment she added with apparent inconsequence, "You mean because of his opinions?"
Catharine gave a rather hard little laugh.
"Well, of course he and I shouldn't agree; I only meant we needn't go out of our way--"
"Certainly not. Only I can't help meeting him sometimes!"
Mary sat up, smiling, with her hands round her knees.
"Of course."
A pause. It was broken by the mother--as though reluctantly.
"Uncle Hugh was here while you were away. He told me about the service last Sunday. Your father would never--never--have done such a thing!"
The repressed passion with which the last words were spoken startled Mary. She made no reply, but her face, now once more turned toward the sunlit pond, had visibly saddened. Inwardly she found herself asking--"If father had lived?--if father were here now?"
Her reverie was broken by her mother's voice--softened--breathing a kind of compunction.
"I daresay he's a good sort of man."
"I think he is," said Mary, simply.
They talked no more on the subject, and presently Catharine Elsmere rose, and went into the house.
Mary sat on by the water-side thinking. Meynell's aspect, Meynell's words, were in her mind--little traits too and incidents of his parochial life that she had come across in the village. A man might preach and preach, and b