"BUT I wasn't doing any harm," she urged piteously. She looked like a
child just going to cry.
"He was holding your hand."
"He wasn't--I was holding his. I was telling him his fortune. And,
anyhow, it's not your business."
She had remembered this late and phrased it carelessly.
"It is my Master's business," said he.
She repressed the retort that touched her lips. After all, there was
something fine about this man, who, in the first month of his
ministrations as Parish Priest, could actually dare to call on her, the
richest and most popular woman in the district, and accuse her of--well,
most people would hardly have gone so far as to call it flirting.
Propriety only knew what the Reverend Christopher Cassilis might be
disposed to call it.
They sat in the pleasant fire-lit drawing-room looking at each other.
"He's got a glorious face," she thought. "Like a Greek god--or a
Christian martyr! I wonder whether he's ever been in love?"
He thought: "She is abominably pretty. I suppose beauty _is_ a
temptation."
"Well," she said impatiently, "you've been very rude indeed, and I've
listened to you. Is your sermon quite done? Have you any more to say? Or
shall I give you some tea?"
"I have more to say," he answered, turning his eyes from hers. "You are
beautiful and young and rich--you have a kind heart--oh, yes--I've heard
little things in the village already. You are a born general. You
organise better than any woman I ever knew, though it's only dances and
picnics and theatricals and concerts. You have great gifts. You could do
great work in the world, and you throw it all away; you give your life
to the devil's dance you call pleasure. Why do you do it?"
"Is that your business too?" she asked again.