"Old Tabitha's jealous!--that's what it is!" said Bruce Ittlethwaite of Ittlethwaite Park, to his maiden sisters,--"Ha-ha-ha! Old green- and-yellow Tabitha is afraid she'll lose her pet parson! Dammit! A pretty woman always starts this kind of nonsense. If it wasn't the clergyman, it would be somebody else--perhaps Sir Morton himself--or perhaps me! Ha-ha-ha! Dammit!"
"I don't believe a word of it!" declared the eldest Miss Ittlethwaite,--"I do not attend Mr. Walden's services myself, but I am quite sure he is an excellent man--and a perfect gentleman. Nothing that Tabitha Pippitt can ever say, will move me on that point!"
"I always had my suspicions!"--said Mrs. Mandeville Poreham, severely, when she in her turn heard the news--"I heard that Miss Vancourt had insisted--positively INSISTED on Mr. Walden's visiting her nearly every day, and I trembled for him! MY girls have gone quite crazy about Miss Vancourt ever since they met her at Sir Morton Pippitt's garden-party, but I have NEVER changed my opinion. MY poor mother always taught me to be firm in my convictions. And Miss Vancourt is a designing person. There's no doubt of it. She affects the innocence of a child--but I doubt whether I have ever met anyone QUITE so worldly and artful!"
So the drops of petty gossip began to trickle,--very slowly at first, and then faster and faster, as is their habitude in the effort to wear away the sparkling adamant of a good name and unblemished reputation. The Reverend Putwood Leveson, vengefully brooding over the wrongs which he considered he had sustained at the hands of Walden, as well as Julian Adderley, rode to and fro on his bicycle from morn till dewy eye, perspiring profusely, and shedding poisonous slanders almost as freely as he exuded melted tallow from his mountainous flesh, aware that by so doing he was not only ingratiating himself with the Pippitts, but also with Lord Roxmouth, through whose influence he presently hoped to 'get a thing or two.' Mordaunt Appleby, the Riversford brewer, and his insignificant spouse, irritated at never having had the chance to 'receive' Lord Roxmouth, were readily pressed into the same service and did their part of scandal-mongering with right good-will and malignant satisfaction. And in less than forty-eight hours' time there was no name too bad for the absent Maryllia; she was 'mixed up' with John Walden,--she had 'tried to entangle him'--there had been 'a scene with him at the Manor,'--she was 'forward,' 'conceited'--and utterly lost to any sense of propriety. Why did she not marry Lord Roxmouth? Why, indeed! Many people could tell if they chose! Ah yes!--and with this, there were sundry shakings of the head and shruggings of the shoulders which implied more than whole volumes of libel.