He would have liked to say something about Mrs.Goddard, but he remembered with some awe and much aversion the circumstances in which he had last quitted the vicarage, and he held his peace; whereby he again rose in Mrs.Ambrose's estimation.

He made up for his silence by speaking effusively of the squire's kindness in asking him to the Hall; forgetting perhaps the relief he had felt when he escaped from Billingsfield after Christmas without being again obliged to shake hands with Mr.Juxon.Things looked very differently now, however.

He felt himself to be somebody in the world, and that distressing sense of inferiority which had perhaps been at the root of his jealousy against the squire was gone, swallowed in the sense of triumph.

His face was pale, perhaps, from overwork, but there was a brilliancy in his eyes and an incisiveness in his speech which came from the confidence of victory.
He now desired nothing more than to meet the squire, feeling sure that he should receive his congratulations, and though he stayed some hours in conversation with his old friends, in imagination he was already at the Hall.

The squire had not come down to meet him, as he had proposed, but he had sent his outlandish American gig with his groom to fetch John.
While he was at the vicarage the latter was probably too much occupied with conversation to notice that Mr.Ambrose seemed preoccupied and changed, and the vicar was to some extent recalled to his usual manner by the presence of his pupil.