Page 658 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

oured to excuse North on account of his recent illness. The
surgeon’s wife looked askance, and turned the conversation.
The next time Sylvia bowed to this lady, she got a chilling
salute in return that made her blood boil. ‘I wonder how I
have offended Mrs. Field?’ she asked Maurice. ‘She almost
cut me to-day.’ ‘Oh, the old cat!’ returned Maurice. ‘What
does it matter if she did?’ However, a few days afterwards, it
seemed that it did matter, for Maurice called upon Field and
conversed seriously with him. The issue of the conversation
being reported to Mrs. Frere, the lady wept indignant tears
of wounded pride and shame. It appeared that North had
watched her out of the house, returned, and related—in a
‘stumbling, hesitating way’, Mrs. Field said—how he disliked
Mrs. Frere, how he did not want to visit her, and how flighty
and reprehensible such conduct was in a married woman of
her rank and station. This act of baseness—or profound no-
bleness—achieved its purpose. Sylvia noticed the unhappy
priest no more. Between the Commandant and the chap-
lain now arose a coolness, and Frere set himself, by various
petty tyrannies, to disgust North, and compel him to a res-
ignation of his office. The convict-gaolers speedily marked
the difference in the treatment of the chaplain, and their
demeanour changed. For respect was substituted insolence;
for alacrity, sullenness; for prompt obedience, impertinent
intrusion. The men whom North favoured were selected as
special subjects for harshness, and for a prisoner to be seen
talking to the clergyman was sufficient to ensure for him
a series of tyrannies. The result of this was that North saw
the souls he laboured to save slipping back into the gulf;