"Perhaps they have made you cherish it all the more."

"As if I wanted that! Please will you tell me how I could have been
more guarded. I don't mind your knowing about this; indeed you
ought, for Sir Stephen trusted me to you, but I can't ask my aunt or
any one else. I can't talk about it, and I would not have them know
that Sir Stephen's wife can't get his memory more respected."

She did not speak with anger as the first time, but with most
touching sadness.

"I don't think any one could answer," he said.

"I did take my aunt's advice about the officers being here. I have
not had them nearly as much as Bessie would have liked, not even
Alick. I have been sorry it was so dull for her, but I thought it
could not be wrong to be intimate with one's clergyman, and Rachel
was always so hard upon him."

"You did nothing but what was kind and right. The only possible
thing that could have been wished otherwise was the making a regular
habit of his playing croquet here."

"Ah! but the boys and Bessie liked it so much. However, I dare say
it was wrong. Alick never did like it."

"Not wrong, only a little overdone. You ladies want sometimes to be
put in mind that, because a clergyman has to manage his own time, he
is not a whit more really at liberty than a soldier or a lawyer,
whose hours are fixed for him. You do not do him or his parish any