CHAPTER V.

A STAGGERING QUESTION.





It was time the curate should take his leave. Bascombe would go out
with him and have his last cigar. The wind had fallen, and the moon
was shining. A vague sense of contrast came over Wingfold, and as he
stepped on the pavement from the threshold of the high gates of
wrought iron, he turned involuntarily and looked back at the house.
It was of red brick, and flat-faced in the style of Queen Anne's
time, so that the light could do nothing with it in the way of
shadow, and dwelt only on the dignity of its unpretentiousness. But
aloft over its ridge the moon floated in the softest, loveliest
blue, with just a cloud here and there to show how blue it was, and
a sparkle where its blueness took fire in a star. It was autumn,
almost winter, below, and the creepers that clung to the house waved
in the now gentle wind like the straggling tresses of old age; but
above was a sky that might have overhung the last melting of spring
into summer. At the end of the street rose the great square tower of
the church, seeming larger than in the daylight. There was something
in it all that made the curate feel there ought to be more--as if