'We will dismiss the fly,' she said. 'It will only attract idlers.' On turning the corner and reaching the church they found the door ajar;
but the building contained only two persons, a man and a woman,--the
clerk and his wife, as they learnt. Swithin asked when the clergyman
would arrive.

The clerk looked at his watch, and said, 'At just on eleven o'clock.' 'He ought to be here,' said Swithin.

'Yes,' replied the clerk, as the hour struck. 'The fact is, sir, he is a
deppity, and apt to be rather wandering in his wits as regards time and
such like, which hev stood in the way of the man's getting a benefit.

But no doubt he'll come.' 'The regular incumbent is away, then?' 'He's gone for his bare pa'son's fortnight,--that's all; and we was
forced to put up with a weak-talented man or none. The best men goes
into the brewing, or into the shipping now-a-days, you see, sir;
doctrines being rather shaddery at present, and your money's worth not
sure in our line. So we church officers be left poorly provided with men
for odd jobs. I'll tell ye what, sir; I think I'd better run round to
the gentleman's lodgings, and try to find him?' 'Pray do,' said Lady Constantine.

The clerk left the church; his wife busied herself with dusting at the
further end, and Swithin and Viviette were left to themselves. The
imagination travels so rapidly, and a woman's forethought is so
assumptive, that the clerk's departure had no sooner doomed them to
inaction than it was borne in upon Lady Constantine's mind that she would
not become the wife of Swithin St. Cleeve, either to-day or on any other
day. Her divinations were continually misleading her, she knew: but a
hitch at the moment of marriage surely had a meaning in it.