“What is this I hear about Waring?” said General Gaunt, walking out upon the loggia, where the Durants were sitting, on the same memorable afternoon on which all that has been above related occurred. The General was dressed in loosely fitting light-coloured clothes. It was one of the recommendations of the Riviera to him that he could wear out there all his old Indian clothes, which would have been useless to him at home. He was a very tall old man, very yellow, nay, almost greenish in the complexion, extremely spare, with a fine old white moustache, which had an immense effect upon his brown face. The well-worn epigram might be adapted in his case to say that nobody ever was so fierce as the General looked; and yet he was at bottom rather a mild{v1-158} old man, and had never hurt anybody, except the sepoys in the Mutiny, all his life. His head was covered with a broad light felt hat, which, soft as it was, took an aggressive cock when he put it on. He held his gloves dangling from his hand with the air of having been in too much haste to put them to their proper use. And his step, as he stepped off the carpet upon the marble of the loggia, sounded like that of an alert officer who has just heard that the enemy has made a reconnaissance in force two miles off, and that there is no time to lose. “What is this I hear about Waring?” he said.

“Yes, indeed!” cried Mrs Durant.

“It is a most remarkable story,” said his Reverence, shaking his head.

“But what is it?” asked the General. “I found Mrs Gaunt almost crying when I went in. What she said was, ‘Charles, we have been nourishing a viper in our bosoms.’ I am not addicted to metaphor, and I insisted upon plain English; and then it all came out. She told me Waring was an impostor, and had been taking us all in; that some old friend of his had been here, and had told you. Is that true?{v1-159}”

“My dear!” said Mr Durant in a tone of remonstrance.

“Well, Henry! you never said it was to be kept a secret. It could not possibly be kept a secret—so few of us here, and all so intimate.”

“Then he is an impostor?” said General Gaunt.

“Oh, my dear General, that’s too strong a word. Henry, you had better tell the General, your own way.”

The old clergyman had been shaking his head all the time. He was dying to tell all that he knew, yet he could not but improve the occasion. “Oh, ladies, ladies!” he said, “when there is anything to be told, the best of women is not to be trusted. But, General, our poor friend is no impostor. He never said he was a widower.”

“It’s fortunate we’ve none of us girls——” the General began; then with a start, “I forgot Miss Tasie; but she’s a girl—a girl in ten thousand,” he added, with a happy inspiration. Tasie, who was still seated behind the teacups, give him a smile in reply.

“Poor dear Mr Waring,” she said, “whether{v1-160} he is a widower or has a wife, it does not matter much. Nobody can call Mr Waring a flirt. He might be any one’s grandfather from his manner. I cannot see that it matters a bit.”

“Not so far as we are concerned, thank heaven!” said her mother, with the air of one whose dear child has escaped a danger. “But I don’t think it is quite respectable for one of our small community to have a wife alive and never to let any one know.”

“I understand, a most excellent woman; besides being a person of rank,” said Mr Durant. “It has disturbed me very much—though, happily, as my wife says, from no private motive.” Here the good man paused, and gave vent to a sigh of thankfulness, establishing the impression that his ingenuous Tasie had escaped as by a miracle from Waring’s wiles; and then he continued, “I think some one should speak to him on the subject. He ought to understand that now it is known, public opinion requires—— Some one should tell him——”

“There is no one so fit as a clergyman,” the General said.

“That is true, perhaps, in the abstract; but{v1-161} with our poor friend—— There are some men who will not take advice from a clergyman.”

“O Henry! do him justice. He has never shown anything but respect to you.”

“I should say that a man of the world, like the General——”

“Oh, not I,” cried the General, getting up hurriedly. “No, thank you; I never interfere with any man’s affairs. That’s your business, Padre. Besides, I have no daughter: whether he is married or not is nothing to me.”

“Nor to us, heaven be praised!” said Mrs Durant; and then she added, “It is not for ourselves; it is for poor little Frances, a girl that has never known a mother’s care! How much better for her to be with her mother, and properly introduced into society, than living in that hugger-mugger way, without education, without companions! If it were not for Tasie, the child would never see a creature near her own age.”

“And I am much older than Frances,” said Tasie, rather to heighten the hardship of the situation than from any sense that this was true.{v1-162}

“Decidedly the Padre ought to talk to him,” said the Anglo-Indian. “He ought to be made to feel that everybody at the station—— Wife all right, do you know? Bless me! if the wife is all right, what does the man mean? Why can’t they quarrel peaceably, and keep up appearances, as we all do?”

“Oh no—not all; we never quarrel.”

“Not for a long time, my love.”

“Henry, you may trust to my memory. Not for about thirty years. We had a little disagreement then about where we were to go for the summer. Oh, I remember it well—the agony it cost me! Don’t say ‘as we all do,’ General, for it would not be true.”

“You are a pair of old turtle-doves,” quoth the General. “All the more reason why you should talk to him, Padre. Tell him he’s come among us on false pretences, not knowing the damage he might have done. I always thought he was a queer hand to have the education of a little girl.”

“He taught her Latin; and that woman of theirs, Mariuccia, taught her to knit. That’s all she knows. And her mother all the time in{v1-163} such a fine position, able to do anything for her! Oh, it is of Frances I think most!”

“It is quite evident,” said the General, “that Mr Durant must interfere.”

“I think it very likely I shall do no good. A man of the world, a man like that——”

“There is no such great harm about the man.”

“And he is very good to Frances,” said Tasie, almost under her breath.

“I daresay he meant no harm,” said the General, “if that is all. Only, he should be warned; and if anything can be done for Frances—— It is a pity she should see nobody, and never have a chance of establishing herself in life.”

“She ought to be introduced into society,” said Mrs Durant. “As for establishing herself in life, that is in the hands of Providence, General. It is not to be supposed that such an idea ever enters into a girl’s mind—unless it is put there, which is so often the case.”

“The General means,” said Tasie, “that seeing people would make her more fit to be a companion for her papa. Frances is a dear girl; but it is quite true—she is wanting in conversation.{v1-164} They often sit a whole evening together and scarcely speak.”

“She is a nice little thing,” said the General, energetically—“I always thought so; and never was at a dance, I suppose, or a junketing of any description, in her life. To be sure, we are all old duffers in this place. The Padre should interfere.”

“If I could see it was my duty,” said Mr Durant.

“I know what you mean,” said General Gaunt. “I’m not too fond of interference myself. But when a man has concealed his antecedents, and they have been found out. And then the little girl——”

“Yes: it is Frances I think of most,” said Mr Durant.

It was at last settled among them that it was clearly the clergyman’s business to interfere. He had been tolerably certain to begin with, but he liked the moral support of what he called a consensus of opinion. Mr Durant was not so reluctant as he professed to be. He had not much scope for those social duties which, he was of opinion,{v1-165} were not the least important of a clergyman’s functions; and though there was a little excitement in the uncertainty from Sunday to Sunday how many people would be at church, what the collection would be, and other varying circumstances, yet the life of the clergyman at Bordighera was monotonous, and a little variety was welcome. In other chaplaincies which Mr Durant had held, he had come in contact with various romances of real life. These were still the days of gaming, when every German bath had its tapis vert and its little troup of tragedies. But the Riviera was very tranquil, and Bordighera had just been found out by the invalid and the pleasure-seeker. It was monotonous: there had been few deaths, even among the visitors, which are always varieties in their way for the clergyman, and often are the means of making acquaintances both useful and agreeable to himself and his family. But as yet there had not even been many deaths. This gave great additional excitement to what is always exciting, for a small community—the cropping up under their very noses, in their own immediate circle, of a mystery, of a dis{v1-166}covery which afforded boundless opportunity for talk. The first thing naturally that had affected Mr and Mrs Durant was the miraculous escape of Tasie, to whom Mr Waring might have made himself agreeable, and whose peace of mind might have been affected, for anything that could be said to the contrary. They said to each other that it was a hair-breadth escape; although it had not occurred previously to any one that any sort of mutual attraction between Mr Waring and Tasie was possible.

And then the other aspects of the case became apparent. Mr Durant felt now that to pass it over, to say nothing about the matter, to allow Waring to suppose that everything was as it had always been, was impossible. He and his wife had decided this without the intervention of General Gaunt; but when the General appeared—the only other permanent pillar of society in Bordighera—then there arose that consensus which made further steps inevitable. Mrs Gaunt looked in later, after dinner, in the darkening; and she, too, was of opinion t............