But why, my
dear Canon, apologize to us? How can this unfortunate sermon affect me or
my niece? How can the scandal you hint at in any respect concern us?"
"Because," he began, that mottling of purple increasingly deforming his
amiable face.--And there words failed him, incontinently he stuck. He
detested strong language, but--heavens and earth--how could he put it to
her, as she gazed at him with startled, candid eyes, innocent of guile as
those of a babe? Only too certainly no word had reached her of the
truth. The good man groaned in spirit for, like Patch, he found himself
in a place of quite unexampled tightness, and with no hope of shunting
the immense discomfort of it on to alien shoulders such as had been
granted the happier Patch.
"Because," he began again, only to suffer renewed agony of wordlessness.
In desperation he shifted his ground.
"You have heard, perhaps, that your niece, Miss Damaris, left the church
before the conclusion of the sermon? I do not blame her"--
He waved a fatherly hand.
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