Il le fit avec des arguments inconsistants et irréfutables, de ces arguments qui fondent devant la raison comme la neige au feu, et qu’on ne pent saisir, des arguments absurdes et triomphants de curé de campagne qui demontre Dieu.

— GUY DE MAUPASSANT.

SYBELL’S party broke up on Saturday, with the exception of Rachel and Mr. Tristram, who had been unable to finish by that date a sketch he was making of Sybell. When Doll discovered that his wife had asked that gentleman to stay over Sunday he entreated Hugh in moving terms to do the same.

“I am not literary,” said Doll, who always thought it necessary to explain that he was not what no one thought he was. “I hate all that sort of thing. Utter rot I call it. For goodness’ sake, Scarlett, sit tight. I must be decent to the beast in my own house, and if you go I shall have to have him alone jawing at me till all hours of the night in the smoking-room.”

Hugh was easily persuaded, and so it came about that the morning congregation at Warpington had the advantage of furtively watching Hugh and Mr. Tristram as they sat together in the carved Wilderleigh pew, with Sybell and Rachel at one end of it and Doll at the other. No one looked at Rachel. Her hat attracted a momentary attention, but her face none.

The Miss Pratts, on the contrary, well caparisoned by their man milliner, well groomed, well curled, were a marked feature of the sparse congregation. The spectator of so many points, all made the most of, unconsciously felt with a sense of oppres- sion that everything that could be done had been done. No stone had been left unturned.

Their brother, Captain Algernon Pratt, sitting behind them, looked critically at them, and owned that they were smart women. But he was not entirely satisfied with them as he had been in the old days, before he went into the Guards and began the real work of his life, raising himself in society.

Captain Pratt was a tall, pale young man — assez beau gar?on — faultlessly dressed, with a quiet acquired manner. He was not ill-looking, the long, upper lip concealed by a perfectly kept moustache, but the haggard eye and the thin line in the cheek, which did not suggest thought and over-work as their cause, made his appearance vaguely repellant.

Jesu, lover of my soul,

sang the shrill voices of the choir boys, echoed by Regie and Mary, standing together, holding their joint hymn-book exactly equally between them, their two small thumbs touching.

Fraülein, on Hester’s other side, was singing with her whole soul, accompanied by a pendulous movement of the body:

Cover my defenceless ’ead,
Wiz ze sadow of zy wing.

Mr. Gresley, after baying like a bloodhound through the opening verses, ascended the pulpit and engaged in prayer. The congregation amen-ed and settled itself. Mary leaned her blonde head against her mother, Regie against Hester.

The supreme moment of the week had come for Mr. Gresley.

He gave out the text:

“Can the blind lead the blind? Shall they not both fall into the ditch?”

All of us who are Churchmen are aware that the sermon is a period admirably suited for quiet reflection.

“A good woman loves but once,” said Mr. Tristram to himself in an attitude of attention, his fine eyes fixed decorously on a pillar in front of him. Some of us would be as helpless without a Bowdlerised generality or a platitude to sustain our minds as the invalid would be without his peptonised beef-tea.

“Rachel is a good woman, a saint. Such a woman does not love in a hurry, but when she does she loves for ever.” What was that poem he and she had so often read together? Tennyson, wasn’t it? about love not altering “when it alteration finds,” but bears it out even to the crack of doom. Fine poet, Tennyson, he knew the human heart. She had certainly adored him four years ago, just in the devoted way in which he needed to be loved. And how he had worshipped her! Of course he had behaved badly. He saw that now. But if he had it was not from want of love. She had been unable to see that at the time. Good women were narrow, and they were hard, and they did not understand men. Those were their faults. Had she learnt better by now? Did she realise that she had far better marry a man who had loved her for herself, and who still loved her, rather than some fortune-hunter like that weedy fellow Scarlett. (Mr. Tristram called all slender men weedy.) He would frankly own his fault and ask for forgiveness. He glanced for a moment at the gentle familiar face beside him.

“She will forgive me,” he said, reassuring himself in spite of an inward qualm of misgiving. “I am glad I arranged to stay on. I will speak to her this afternoon. She has become much softened, and we will bury the past, and make a fresh start together.”

“I will walk up to Beaumere this afternoon,” said Doll, stretching a leg outside the open end of the pew. “I wish Gresley would not call the Dissenters worms. They are some of my best tenants, and they won’t like it when they hear of it. And I’ll go round the young pheasants. (Doll did this or something similar every Sunday afternoon of his life, but he always rehearsed it comfortably in thought on Sunday mornings.) And if Withers is about I’ll go out in the boat, the big one, the little one leaks, and set a trimmer or two for to-morrow. I’m not sure I’ll set one under the south bank, for there was the devil to pay last time when that beast of an eel got among the roots. I’ll ask Withers what he thinks. I wish Gresley would not call the Dissenters blind leaders of the blind. It’s such bad form, and I don’t suppose the text meant that to start with, and what’s the use of ill-feeling in a parish. And I’ll take Scarlett with me. We’ll slip off after luncheon, and leave that bounder to bound by himself. And poor old Crack shall come too. Uncle George always took him.”

“James is simply surpassing himself,” said Mrs. Gresley to herself, her arm round her little daughter. “Worms! what a splendid comparison. The Churchman the full-grown man after the stature of Christ, and the Dissenter invertebrate (I think dear James means inebriate) like a worm cleaving to the earth. But possibly God in His mercy may let them slip in by a back door to heaven! How like him to say that, so generous, so wide-minded, taking the hopeful view of everything. How noble he looks. These are days in which we should stick to our colours. I wonder how he can think of such beautiful things. For my part I think the duty of the true priest is not to grovel to the crowd and call wrong right and right wrong for the sake of a fleeting popularity. How striking! What a lesson to the Bishop if he were only here. He is so lax about Dissent, as if right and wrong were mere matters of opinion. What a gift he has. I know he will eat nothing for luncheon. If only we were somewhere else where the best joints were a little cheaper, and his talents more appreciated.” And Mrs. Gresley closed her eyes and prayed earnestly, a tear sliding down her cheek on to Mary’s floss-silk mane, that she might become less unworthy to be the wife of one so far above her, that the children might all grow up like him, and that she might be given patience to bear with Hester even when she vexed him.

Captain Pratt’s critical eye travelled over the congregation. It absolutely ignored Mrs. Gresley and Fraülein. It lingered momentarily on Hester. He knew what he called “breeding” when he saw it, and he was aware that Hester possess............