The decree had gone forth, and Dacre was to go to Eton. Ancestral taint and sisterly guile had won the day, though not without a tough struggle. The idea of home culture, vague and ill-defined as it was, died hard, and Mr. and Mrs. Waring still bemoaned their fate daily in the intervals of work.

They were now much disturbed in their minds concerning the plan of religion which they had conceived in the tender youth of their offspring, and which had been worked up to with rather more consistency than usually characterized those plans of theirs that dealt with outside and minor matters.

That it should have occurred to Henry and Grace Waring was the most remarkable part of this plan. They both looked upon religion as they did upon art, as a thing apart and on a somewhat low level, to be considered in leisure hours. In some phases of mind they might indeed almost have been said to glory in it, and to rejoice that the ages should own such a heritage, just as one might rejoice in the work of a great master.

They were, of course, both too appreciative of good literature to have neglected the Bible, they knew every twist and turn in it as they did of the Koran and the Brahminic Vedas.

As for doubts and things of that sort, they never, so to speak, went in for them, their minds were not of that order. In the same way the truths or the untruths of Christianity seemed to them an interesting enough study between working hours. In Mrs. Waring’s case, perhaps, they appealed fitfully to some part of herself she never quite understood, that same sentimental part that often suffered a keen stab,—for instance in the case of the Rectory babies, and sometimes from a strange look in Gwen’s face. But she had almost ceased to speculate upon these odd sensations, and was inclined to put them down to a strain of puritan blood that had somehow trickled into the more vigorous fluid of her fighting forbears, which perhaps might almost account for her preference for Christianity over other creeds.

It will be seen then that the reception or rejection of Christianity by their children, was a matter of no vital importance to these parents. They were, however, intensely interested in the result itself, that was quite another thing; the phases of mind the function must unfold seemed certainly a subject worth research, and filled them with the keenest interest.

“You are quite sure, dearest,” said Mr. Waring, a few days before Dacre’s departure was to take place, “that Mary has not tampered with the minds of our children.”

“I am certain, quite certain. She has certainly seemed to resent my orders in this matter, but she has not disobeyed them.”

Mrs. Waring sat down and tried to take up the thread of her thoughts, but it was broken again in a minute by Mr. Waring pushing back his chair suddenly and looking at her in a disturbed restless way. She went over, laid her hand on his shoulder, and looked anxiously into his face.

“Are you troubled, love, can I not help you?”

“I should be glad, my Grace, if I felt more convinced that the minds of our children are really a blank as far as any knowledge of religion goes.”

“I am sure Mr. and Mrs. Fellowes——”

“Dearest, the idea is revolting! Fellowes, a gentleman! And his wife! She is your friend, that is sufficient.” He bowed as his grandfather, the courtliest man in a courtly court might have done. “But I fear that when very young the children may have received foreign impressions, the class that people the stable-yard are often quite versed in what they term ‘the truths of the Gospel’.”

“But so long ago?”

“Not so very long after all, and impressions are most tenacious things, more especially erroneous ones. Does the fact not hamper us daily, dearest? Even this moment,” he went on musingly, “after all these years, I can recollect praying at my mother’s knee with a quite astonishing fervour, which now seems next to reasonless, and yet I doubt if the impression of that fervour will ever leave me.”

“We can only hope, dearest,” she said.

Her husband’s fear depressed her, she was feeling just then, and rather to her cost, how very remarkably clinging old impressions were. They were hovering round her at that very moment and entwining her in a maze of the old dead visions of dead days, when she was a child herself and wore long lawn nightgowns with frilled sashes, and said prayers. She went over to the fire to make it up and ended by putting it out.

“Oh, Henry,” she said at last, from the hearthrug, shivering a little, “what if, after all, we might just as well have allowed our children to run along the common groove like those very fat children of Mrs. Manners’,—they seem wholesome and not devoid of intelligence. And then they are handsome and well grown, yet the boy is ten and not even in Latin; Mrs. Manners considers that in ten years the fact will make no difference in his career. On the contrary, look at Dacre, think of the load of anxiety and thought we have expended upon him and yet——” She broke off sadly.

Her husband regarded her for a minute with sympathizing eyes.

“Dearest,” he said at last softly, “you are apt to forget the fact that our poor Dacre is—I hate to hurt you, dear, but you know it—he is most unfortunately a throwing-back, and must follow the fate of his kind. He must enter the army,—it is deplorable, but so it must be.”

“The army!” murmured the small woman wringing her hands softly, “it is sad, it is hard on us. I do think, dearest, we might have been more successful in our children.”

“Our child,” interrupted her husband.

Her eyes clouded and she repeated hesitatingly, “Yes, our child—Gwen’s abilities are considerable.”

“Yes,” said her father with unmixed satisfaction, “my hopes rest on Gwen, her abilities are indeed most gratifying.”

For one fleeting moment, which she blotted from her memory with shame, her mother almost wished they weren’t; she might then be easier to get some knowledge of, and not be quite so alarming.