CHAPTER IX.
THE RECTORY DRAWING-ROOM.
The call was upon his curate.

It was years since he had entered the rectory.

The people who last occupied it, he had scarcely known, and even during its preparation for Wingfold he had not gone near the place.
Yet of that house had been his dream as he stood in his mare's stall, and it was with a strange feeling he now approached it.

Friends generally took the pleasanter way to the garden door, opening on the churchyard, but Mr.Bevis went round by the lane to the more public entrance.
All his years with his first wife had been spent in that house.

She was delicate when he married her, and soon grew sickly and suffering.