to ask questions. What sort of woman would such a man marry, and what
sort of woman would marry such a man? Morna asked herself the one
question after the other, almost as often as she set her right foot in
front of her left; but she was not merely inquisitive in the matter, she
had a secret and instinctive compassion for the woman who had done this
thing.

"She will not have a soul to call her own, poor thing!" thought Morna,
as indignantly as though the imaginary evil was one of the worst that
could befall; for the vicar's wife had her little weaknesses, not by any
means regarded as such by herself; and this was one of the last things
that could have been said about her, or that she would have cared to
hear.

The woodland path led at last into the long avenue, and there was
Normanthorpe House at the end of the vista; an Italian palace
transplanted into the north of England, radiantly white between the
green trees and blue sky, with golden cupola burning in the sun; perhaps
the best specimen extant to mark a passing fashion in Georgian
architecture, but as ill-suited to the Delverton district as an
umbrella-tent to the North Pole. A cool grotto on a really hot day, the
house was an ice-pit on any other; or so Mrs. Woodgate fancied, fresh
from the cosey Vicarage, and warm from her rapid walk, as she stepped
into another temperature, across polished marble that struck a chill
through the soles of her natty brown shoes, and so into the lofty
drawing-room with pilasters and elaborate architraves to the doors. What
a place for a sane man to build in bleak old Delverton, even before
there was any Northborough to blacken and foul the north-east wind on
its way from the sea! What a place for a sane man to buy; and yet, in
its cool white smoothness, its glaring individuality, its alien air--how