The Perpetual Curate by Margaret Oliphant

Mr. Wentworth retired to his own quarters with enough to think about for one morning. He could not make up his mind about Wodehouse -- whether he was guilty or not guilty. It seemed incredible that, penniless as he was, he could have succeeded in carrying off a girl so well known in Carlingford as Rosa Elsworthy; and, if he had taken her away, how did it happen that he himself had come back again? The Curate saw clearly enough that his only chance for exculpating himself in the sight of the multitude was by bringing home the guilt to somebody else; and in proportion to the utter scorn with which he had treated Elsworthy's insinuations at first, was his serious apprehension now of the danger which surrounded him. He divined all that slander would make of it with the quickened intelligence of a man whose entire life, and reputation dearer than life, were at stake.

If it could not be cleared up -- if even any investigation which he might be able to demand was not perfectly successful -- Mr. Wentworth was quite well aware that the character of a clergyman was almost as susceptible as that of a woman, and that the vague stigma might haunt and overshadow him all his life. The thought was overwhelming at this moment, when his first hopes of finding a speedy solution of the mystery had come to nothing. If he had but lived a century earlier, the chances are that no doubt of Wodehouse's guilt would have entered his mind; but Mr. Wentworth was a man of the present age -- reasonable to a fault, and apt to consider other people as much as possible from their own point of view. He did not see, looking at the circumstances, how Wodehouse could be guilty; and the Curate would not permit the strong instinctive certainty that he was guilty, to move his own mind from what he imagined to be its better judgment.