“I am not quite sure about that,” she said after a while. “I think, Mr Maguire, that there should be a little money on both sides. You would hardly wish to live altogether on your wife’s fortune.”

“I have my profession,” he replied, quickly.

“Yes, certainly; and a noble profession it is,—the most noble,” said she.

“Yes, indeed; the most noble.”

“But somehow—”

“You mean the clergymen are not paid as they should be. No, they are not, Miss Mackenzie. And is it not a shame for a Christian country like this that it should be so? But still, as a profession, it has its value. Look at Mrs Stumfold; where would she be if she were not a clergyman’s wife? The position has its value. A clergyman’s wife is received everywhere, you know.”

“A man before he talks of marriage ought to have something of his own, Mr Maguire, besides—”

“Besides what?”

“Well, I’ll tell you. As you have done me this honour, I think that I am now bound to tell you what Mrs Stumfold said to me. She had no right to connect my name with yours or with that of any other gentleman, and my quarrel with her is about that. As to what she said about you, that is your affair and not mine.”

Then she told him the whole of that conversation which was given in the last chapter, not indeed repeating the hint about the three or four wives, but recapitulating as clearly as she could all that had been said about the suitable young lady.

“I knew it,” said he; “I knew it. I knew it as well as though I had heard it. Now what am I to think of that woman, Miss Mackenzie?”

“Of which woman?”

“Of Mrs Stumfold, of course. It’s all jealousy: every bit of it jealousy.”

“Jealousy! Do you mean that she—that she—”

“Not jealousy of that kind, Miss Mackenzie. Oh dear, no. She’s as pure as the undriven snow, I should say, as far as that goes. But she can’t bear to think that I should rise in the world.”

“I thought she wanted to marry you to a suitable lady, and young, with a fair provision.”

“Pshaw! The lady has about seventy pounds a-year! But that would signify nothing if I loved her, Miss Mackenzie.”

“There has been something, then?”

“Yes; there has been something. That is, nothing of my doing,—nothing on earth. Miss Mackenzie, I am as innocent as the babe unborn.”

As he said this she could not help looking into the horrors of his eyes, and thinking that innocent was not the word for him.

“I’m as innocent as the babe unborn. Why should I be expected to marry a lady merely because Mrs Stumfold tells me that there she is? And it’s my belief that old Peters has got their money somewhere, and won’t give it up, and that that’s the reason of it.”

“But did you ever say you would marry her?”