comforting; his manner on bidding her good-night was genial. Now, he might come this evening, said False Hope: she almost knew it was False Hope which breathed the whisper, and yet she listened.
She tried to read—her thoughts wandered; she tried to sew—every stitch she put in was an ennui, the occupation was insufferably tedious; she opened her desk, and attempted to write a French composition—she wrote nothing but mistakes.
Suddenly the door-bell sharply rang—her heart leaped—she sprang to the drawing-room door, opened it softly, peeped through the aperture: Fanny was admitting a visitor—a gentleman—a tall man—just the height of Robert. For one second she thought it was Robert—for one second she exulted; but the voice asking for Mr. Helstone undeceived her: that voice was an Irish voice, consequently not Moore’s but the curate’s—Malone’s. He was ushered into the dining-room, where, doubtless, he speedily helped his Rector to empty the decanters.
It was a fact to be noted, that at whatever house in Briarfield, Whinbury, or Nunnely, one curate dropped in to a meal—dinner or tea, as the case might be—another presently followed; often two more. Not that they gave each other the rendezvous, but they were usually all on the run at the same time; and when Donne, for instance, sought Malone at his lodgings and found him not, he inquired whither he had posted, and having learned of the
