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"Maybe she is. But what would you have? She must hate the girl."

"Why should she hate her?"

"You know well, sir."

"I know naught that she should hate her for, though enough that she should have hated you for once had she been so minded. But all that's very long ago, and had she felt bound to hate a poor innocent child for being born to her husband out of wedlock she shouldn't have taken her into her house."

"I commanded her to take her in. She was forced to obey me."

The Parson struggled a smile into a grimace. "You shouldn't have commanded. The child would be happier on the Parish than in a home where she's tormented."

"She an't tormented. She has been brought up under a godly discipline, as beseems a child of rebuke——"

"Nay, have done with that. I'm weary of your rebukes and sins and condemnations. You do but glory in them."

"I will glory in my infirmities, as the Apostle saith."

Gervase sighed stormily.

"Aye, your running sores of body and soul—whereas both could most likely be cured at once with a good plaster."