She was not slow to make play with it.
"Now it is my turn to be shocked," she said--"and not, I think, James, without good cause." "Yes, I apologize," the excellent man answered immediately.

"I apologize; but to have so foul a suggestion of parochial scandal let loose on me suddenly, flung in my teeth, as I may say--and by you! I was taken off my guard and expressed myself coarsely.

Yes, Jane, I apologize." "Then I have you authority for contradicting these rumours ?" The Vicar of Deadham groaned in the darkness, and rustled under the bedclothes.

His perplexity was great on being thus confronted by the time-honoured question as to how far, in the interests of public morality, it is justifiable for the private individual roundly to lie.
Finally he banked on compromise, that permanently presiding genius of the Church of England 'as by law established.' "You have me on the hip, my love," he told his wife quite meekly.
But, as she began rather eagerly to speak, he stopped her.
"Let be, my dear Jane," he bade her, "let be.

I neither deny or confirm the rumours to which I imagine you allude.