It was a breezy June afternoon, with the young summer at its freshest and lustiest.

Lord and Lady William Newbury were strolling in the garden at Hoddon Grey. The long low line of the house rose behind them—an attractive house and an old one, but with no architectural features to speak of, except a high-pitched mossy roof, a picturesque series of dormer-windows, and a high gable and small lantern cupola at the farther end which marked the private chapel. The house was evidently roomy, but built for comfort, not display; the garden with its spreading slopes and knolls was simple and old-fashioned, in keeping thereby with the general aspect of the two people who were walking up and down the front lawn together.

Lord William Newbury was a man of sixty-five, tall and slenderly built. His pale hazel eyes, dreamily kind, were the prominent feature of his face; he had very thin flat cheeks, and his white hair—he was walking bareheaded—was blown back from a brow which, like the delicate mouth, was still young, almost boyish. Sweetness and a rather weak refinement—a stranger would probably have summed up his first impressions of Lord William, drawn from his bodily presence, in some such words. But the stranger who did so would have been singularly wide of the mark. His wife beside him looked even frailer and slighter than he. A small and mouse-like woman, dressed in gray clothes of the simplest and plainest make, and wearing a shady garden hat; her keen black eyes in her shriveled face gave that clear promise of strong character in which her husband's aspect, at first sight, was lacking. But Lady William knew her place. She was the most submissive and the most docile of wives; and on no other terms would life have been either possible or happy in her husband's company.

They were discussing, with some eagerness, the approaching arrival of their week-end guests—Lady Coryston and Marcia, the new dean of a neighboring cathedral, an ex-Cabinet Minister and an Oxford professor. But the talk, however it circled, had a way of returning to Marcia. It was evident that she held the field.

"It is so strange that I have scarcely seen her!" Lady William was saying in a tone which was not without its note of complaint. "I hope dear Edward has not been too hasty in his choice. As for you, William, I don't believe you would know her again, if you were to see her without her mother."

"Oh yes, I should. Her mother introduced her to me at the Archbishop's party, and I talked to her a little. A very handsome young woman. I remember thinking her talk rather too theatrical."

"About theaters, you mean," sighed Lady William. "Well, that's the way with all the young people. The fuss people make about actors and actresses is perfectly ridiculous."

"I remember she talked to me enthusiastically about Madame Froment," said Lord William, in a tone of reminiscence. "I asked her whether she knew that Madame Froment had a scandalous story, and was not fit acquaintance for a young girl. And she opened her eyes at me, as though I had propounded something absurd. 'One doesn't inquire about that!' she said—quite indignantly, I assure you! 'but only whether she can act.' It was curious—and rather disquieting—to see so much decision—self-assertion—in so young a woman."

"Oh, well, Edward will change all that." Lady William's voice was gently confident. "He assures me that she has excellent principles—a fine character really, though quite undeveloped. He thinks she will be readily guided by one she loves."

"I hope so, for Edward's sake—for he is very much in love. I trust he is not letting inclination run away with him. So much—to all of us—depends on his marriage!"

Lord William, frowning a little, paused a moment in his walk and turned his eyes to the house. Hoddon Grey had only become his personal property some three years before this date; but ever since his boyhood it had been associated for him with hallowed images and recollections. It had been the dower-house of his widowed mother, and after her death his brother, a widower with one crippled son, had owned it for nearly a quarter of a century. Both father and son had belonged to the straitest sect of Anglo-Catholicism; their tender devotion to each other had touched with beauty the austerity and seclusion of their lives. Yet at times Hoddon Grey had sheltered large gatherings—gatherings of the high Puseyite party in the English Church, both lay and clerical. Pusey himself had preached in the chapel; Liddon with the Italianate profile—orator and ascetic—might have been seen strolling under the trees where Lord and Lady William were strolling now; Manning, hatchet-faced, jealous and self-conscious, had made fugitive appearances there; even the great Newman himself, in his extreme old age, had once rested there on a journey, and given his Cardinal's blessing to the sons of one of his former comrades in the Oxford movement.

Every stone in the house, every alley in the garden, was sacred in Lord William's eyes. To most men the house they love represents either the dignity and pride of family, or else successful money-making, and the pleasure of indulged tastes. But to Lord William Newbury the house of Hoddon Grey stood as the symbol of a spiritual campaign in which his forebears, himself, and his son were all equally enrolled—the endless, unrelenting campaign of the Church against the world, the Christian against the unbeliever.

... His wife broke in upon his reverie.

"Are you going to say anything about Lord Coryston's letter, William?"

Lord William started.

"Say anything to his mother? Certainly not, Albinia!" He straightened his shoulders. "It is my intention to take no notice of it whatever."

"You have not even acknowledged it?" she asked, timidly.

"A line—in the third person."

"Edward thinks Lady Coryston most unwise—"

"So she is—most unwise!" cried Lord William, warmly. "Coryston has every right to complain of her."

"You think she has done wrong?"

"Certainly. A woman has no right to do such things—whatever her son may be. For a woman to take upon herself the sole direction and disposal of such properties as the Coryston properties is to step outside the bounds of her sex; it is to claim something which a woman ought not to claim—something altogether monstrous and unnatural!"

Lord William's thin features had flushed under a sudden rush of feeling. His wife could not help the sudden thought, "But if we had had an infidel or agnostic son?"

Aloud she said, "You don't think his being such a Radical, so dreadfully extreme and revolutionary, justifies her?"

"Not at all! That was God's will—the cross she had to bear. She interferes with the course of Providence—presumptuously interferes with it—doing evil that what she conceives to be good may come. A woman must persuade men by gentleness—not govern them by force. If she attempts that she is usurping what does not—what never can—belong to her."

The churchman had momentarily disappeared in the indignant stickler for male prerogative and the time-honored laws of English inheritance. Lady William acquiesced in silence. She, too, strongly disapproved of Lady Coryston's action toward her eldest son, abominable as Coryston's opinions were. Women, like minorities, must suffer; and she was glad to have her husband's word for it that it is not their business to correct or coerce their eldest sons, on the ground of political opinions, however grievous those opinions may be.

"I trust that Lady Coryston will not open on this subject to me," said Lord William, after a pause. "I am never good at concealing my opinions for politeness' sake. And of course I hold that Coryston is just as much in the wrong as she. And mad to boot! No sane man could have written the letter I received last week?"

"Do you think he will do what he threatens?"

"What—get up a subscription for Mr. and Mrs. Betts, and settle them somewhere here? I dare say! We can't help it. We can only follow our consciences."

Lord William held himself erect. At that moment no one could have thought of "sweetness" in connection with the old man's delicately white features. Every word fell from him with a quiet and steely deliberation.

His wife walked beside him a little longer. Then she left him and went into the house to see that all the last preparations for the guests were made; gathering on her way a bunch of early roses from a bed near the house. She walked slowly through the guestrooms on the garden front, looking at everything with a critical eye. The furniture of the rooms was shabby and plain. It had been scarcely changed at all since 1832, when Lord William's widowed mother had come to live at Hoddon Grey. But everything smelt of lavender and much cleaning. The windows were open to the June air, and the house seemed pervaded by the cooing of doves from the lime walk outside; a sound which did but emphasize the quiet of the house and garden. At the end of the garden front Lady William entered a room which had a newer and fresher appearance than the rest. The walls were white; a little rosebud chintz curtained the windows and the bed. White rugs made the hearth and the dressing-table gay, and there was a muslin bedspread lined with pink and tied with knots of pink ribbon.

Lady William stood and looked at it with an intense and secret pleasure. She had been allowed to "do it up" the preceding summer, out of her own money, on which, in all her life, she had never signed a check; and she had given orders that Miss Coryston was to be put into it. Going to the dressing-table, she took from the vase there the formal three sprigs of azalea which the housemaid had arranged, and replaced them by the roses. Her small, wrinkled hands lingered upon them. She was putting them there for the girl Edward loved—who was probably to be his wife. A great tenderness filled her heart.

When she left the room, she rapidly descended a staircase just beyond it, and found herself in the vestibule of the chapel. Pushing the chapel doors open, she made her way in. The rich glooms and scents of the beautiful still place closed upon her. Kneeling before the altar, still laden with Whitsun flowers, and under the large crucifix that hung above it, she prayed for her son, that he might worthily uphold the heritage of his father, that he might be happy in his wife, and blessed with children....

An hour later the drawing-room and the lawns of Hoddon Grey were alive with tea and talk. Lady Coryston, superbly tall, in trailing black, was strolling with Lord William. Sir Wilfrid, the ex-Minister Sir Louis Ford, the Dean, and the Chaplain of the house were chatting and smoking round the deserted tea-table, while Lady William and the Oxford Professor poked among the flower-beds, exchanging confidences on phloxes and delphiniums.

In the distance, under the lime avenue, now in its first pale leaf, two young figures paced to and fro. They were Newbury and Marcia.

Sir Wilfrid had just thrown himself back in his chair, looking round him with a sigh of satisfaction.

"Hoddon Grey makes me feel good! Not a common effect of country-houses!"

"Enjoy them while you may!" laughed Sir Louis Ford. "Glenwilliam is after them."

"Glenwilliam!" exclaimed the Dean. "I saw him at the station, with his handsome but rather strange-looking daughter. What's he doing here?"

"Hatching mischief with a political friend of his—a 'fidus Achates'—who lives near here," said the Chaplain, Mr. Perry, in a deep and rather melancholy tone.

"From the bills I saw posted up in Martover as we came through"—Sir Louis Ford lowered his voice—"I gathered the amazing fact that Coryston—Coryston!—is going to take the chair at a meeting where Glenwilliam speaks some way on in next month."

Sir Wilfrid shrugged his shoulders, with a warning glance at the stately form of Coryston's mother in the distance.

"Too bad to discuss!" he said, shortly.

A slight smile played round the Dean's flexible mouth. He was a new-comer, and much more of an Erastian than Lord William approved. He had been invited, not for pleasure, but for tactics; that the Newburys might find out what line he was going to take in the politics of the diocese.

"We were never told," said the Dean, "that a woman's foes were to be those of her own household!"

The Chaplain frowned.

"Lord Coryston is making enemies in all directions," he said, hastily. "I understand that a letter Lord William received from him last week was perfectly outrageous."

"What about?" asked Sir Louis.

"A divorce case—a very painful one—on which we have found it necessary to take a strong line."

The speaker, who was largely made and gaunt, with grizzled hair and spectacles, spoke with a surprising energy. The Dean looked puzzled.

"What had Lord Coryston to do with it?"

"What indeed?—except that he is out for picking up any grievances he can."

"Who are the parties?"

The Chaplain told the story.

"They didn't ask anybody to marry them in church, did they?" asked the Dean.

"Not that I know of."

The Dean said nothing, but as he lay back in his chair, his hands behind his head, his expression was rather hostile than acquiescent.

Meanwhile, under the lime walk the golden evening insensibly heightened the pleasure of Newbury and Marcia in each other's society. For the sunny fusion of earth and air glorified not only field and wood, but the human beings walking in them. Nature seemed to be adapting herself to them—shedding a mystic blessing on their path. Both indeed were conscious of a secret excitement. They felt the approach of some great moment, as though a pageant or presence were about to enter. For the first time, Marcia's will was in abeyance. She was scarcely ecstatically happy; on the far horizon of life she seemed to be conscious of storm-clouds, of things threatening and unexplored. And yet she was in love; she was thrilled both physically and spiritually by the man beside her; with a certain helplessness, she confessed in him a being stronger and nobler than herself; the humility, the self-surrender of passion was rising in her, like the sap in the spring tree, and she trembled under it.

Newbury too had grown a little pale and silent. But when his eyes met hers there was that in them under which her own wavered.

"Come and see the flowers in the wood," he said, softly, and leading the way, he took her out of range of those observers in the garden; deep into a noble beech wood that rose out of the garden, climbing through a sea of wild hyacinths to a hilltop.

A mossy path offered itself, winding through the blue. And round them closed the great beech trees, in a marvel of young green, sparkling and quivering under the shafts of light that struck through the wood. The air was balm. And the low music of the wood-pigeons seemed to be there for them only; a chorus of earth's creatures, wooing them to earth's festival.

Unconsciously, in the deep heart of the wood, their footsteps slackened. She heard her name breathed.

"Marcia!"

She turned, submissive, and saw him looking down upon her with adoring tenderness, his lips gravely smiling.

"Yes!"

She raised her eyes to his, all her ripe beauty one flush. He put his arms round her, whispering:

"Marcia! will you come to me—will you be my wife?"

She leaned against him in a trance of happiness, hiding her face, yet not so that his lips could not find hers. So this was love?—the supreme of life?

They stood so in silence a little. Then, still holding her, he drew her within the low feathering branches of a giant tree, where was a fallen log. He placed her on it, and himself beside her.

"How wonderful that you should love me, that you should let me love you!" he said, with passionate emotion. "Oh, Marcia, am I worthy—shall I make you happy?"

"That is for me to ask!" Her mouth was trembling now, and the tears were in her eyes. "I'm not nearly as good as you, Edward. I shall often make you angry with me."

"Angry!" He laughed in scorn. "Could any one, ever, be angry with you, Marcia! Darling, I want you to help me so! We'll help each other—to live as we ought to live. Isn't God good? Isn't life wonderful?"

She pressed his hand for answer. But the intensity of his joy, as she read it in his eyes, had in it—for her—and for the moment—just a shade of painfulness. It seemed to claim something from her that she could not quite give—or that she might not be able to give. Some secret force in her cried out in protest. But the slight shrinking passed almost immediately. She threw off her hat, and lifted her beautiful brow to him in a smiling silence. He drew her to him again, and as she felt the pressure of his arm about her, heart and soul yielded utterly. She was just the young girl, loving and beloved.

"Do your father and mother really approve?" she asked at last as she disengaged herself, and her hands went up to her hot cheeks, and then to her hair, to smooth it back into something like order.

"Let us go and see." He raised her joyously to her feet.

She looked at him a little wistfully.

"I'm rather afraid of them, Edward. You must tell them not to expect too much. And I shall always—want to be myself."

"Darling! what else could they, could any one want for you—or for me!" The tone showed him a little startled, perhaps stung, by her words. And he added, with a sudden flush:

"Of course I know what Coryston will say to you. He seems to think us all hypocrites and tyrants. Well—you will judge. I won't defend my father and mother. You will soon know them. You will see what their lives are."

He spoke with feeling. She put her hand in his, responding.

"You'll write to Corry—won't you? He's a dreadful thorn in all our sides; and yet—" Her eyes filled with tears.

"You love him?" he said, gently. "That's enough for me."

"Even if he's rude and violent?" she pleaded.

"Do you think I can't keep my temper—when it's your brother? Try me."

He clasped her hand warm and close in his strong fingers. And as she moved through the young green of the woodland he saw her as a spirit of delight, the dark masses of her hair, her white dress and all her slender grace flecked by the evening sun. These were moments, he knew, that could never come again; that are unique in a man's history. He tried to hold and taste them as they passed; tormented, like all lovers, by what seems, in such crises, to be the bitter inadequacy and shallowness of human feeling.

They took a more round-about path home than that which had brought them into the wood, and at one point it led them through a clearing from which there was a wide view of undulating ground scattered with houses here and there. One house, a pleasant white-walled dwelling, stood conspicuously forward amid copses a couple of fields away. Its garden surrounded by a sunk fence could be seen, and the figure of a lady walking in it. Marcia stopped to look.

"What a charming place! Who lives there?"

Newbury's eyes followed hers. He hesitated a moment.

"That is the model farm."

"Mr. Betts's farm?"

"Yes. Can you manage that stile?"

Marcia tripped over it, scorning his help. But her thoughts were busy with the distant figure. Mrs. Betts, no doubt; the cause of all the trouble and talk in the neighborhood, and the occasion of Corry's outrageous letter to Lord William.

"I think I ought to tell you," she said, stopping, with a look of perplexity, "that Corry is sure to come and talk to me—about that story. I don't think I can prevent him."

"Won't you hand him on to me? It is really not a story for your ears."

He spoke gravely.

"I'm afraid Cony would call that shirking. I—I think perhaps I had better have it out with him—myself. I remember all you said to me!"

"I only want to save you." His expression was troubled, but not without a certain touch of sternness that she perceived. He changed the subject immediately, and they walked on rapidly toward the garden.

Lady William first perceived them—perceived, too, that they were hand in hand. She broke off her chat with Sir Wilfrid Bury under the limes, and rising in sudden agitation she hurried across the lawn to her husband.

The Dean and Sir Louis Ford had been discussing Woman Suffrage over their cigarettes, and Sir Louis, who was a stout opponent, had just delivered himself of the frivolous remark—in answer to some plea of the Dean's on behalf of further powers for the female sex:

"Oh, no doubt, somewhere between the Harem and the Woolsack, it will be necessary to draw the line!"—when they too caught sight of the advancing figures.

The Dean's eyebrows went up. A smile, most humorous and human, played over his round cheeks and button mouth.

"Have they drawn it? Looks like it!" he said, under his breath.

"Eh!—what?" Sir Louis, the most incorrigible of elderly gossips, eagerly put up his eyeglass. "Do you suspect anything?"

Five persons were presently gathered in the library, and Marcia was sitting with her hand in Lady William's. Everybody except Lady Coryston was in a happy agitation, and trying to conceal it. Even Lord William, who was not without his doubts and qualms, was deeply moved, and betrayed a certain moisture in his eyes, as he concluded his old world speech of welcome and blessing to his son's betrothed. Only Lady Coryston preserved an unbroken composure. She was indeed quite satisfied. She had kissed her daughter and given her consent without the smallest demur, and she had conveyed both to Newbury and his father in a few significant words that Marcia's portion would be worthy of their two families. But the day's event was already thrust aside by her burning desire to get hold of Sir Louis Ford before dinner, and to extract from him the latest and most confidential information that a member of the Opposition could bestow as to the possible date for the next general election. Marcia's affair was thoroughly nice and straightforward—just indeed what she had expected. But there would be plenty of time to talk about it after the Hoddon Grey visit was over; whereas Sir Louis was a rare bird not often to be caught.

"My dear," said Lord William in his wife's ear, "Perry must be informed of this. There must be some mention of it in our service to-night."

She assented. Newbury, however, who was standing near, caught the remark, and looked rather doubtfully at the speaker.

"You think so, father?"

"Certainly, my dear son, certainly."

Neither Marcia nor her mother heard. Newbury approached his betrothed, but perceived that there was no chance of a private word with her. For by this time other guests had been summoned to receive the great announcement, and a general flutter of laughter and congratulations was filling the room.

The Dean, who had had his turn with Marcia, and was now turning over books, looked at her keenly from time to time.

"A face," he thought, "of much character, promising developments. Will she fit herself to this medieval household? What will they make of her?"

Sir Louis, after paying his respects and expressing his good wishes to the betrothed pair, had been resolutely captured by Lady Coryston. Lord William had disappeared.

Suddenly into the talk and laughter there struck the sound of a loud and deep-toned bell. Lady William stood up with alacrity. "Dear me!—is it really chapel-time? Lady Coryston, will you come?"

Marcia's mother, her face stiffening, rose unwillingly.

"What are we supposed to do?" asked the Dean, addressing Newbury.

"We have evensong in chapel at seven," said Newbury. "My father set up the custom many years ago. It gathers us all together better than evening prayer after dinner."

His tone was simple and matter-of-fact. He turned radiantly to Marcia, and took her hand again. She followed him in some bewilderment, and he led her through the broad corridor which gave access to the chapel.

"Rather unusual, this, isn't it?" said Sir Louis Ford to Lady Coryston as they brought up the rear. His face expressed a certain restrained amusement. If there was a convinced agnostic in the kingdom it was he. But unlike the woman at his side he could always take a philosophical interest in the religious customs of his neighbors.

"Most unusual!" was the emphatic reply. But there was no help for it. Lady Coryston followed, willy-nilly.

Marcia, meanwhile, was only conscious of Newbury. As they entered the chapel together she saw his face transfigured. A mystical "recollection," shutting him away completely from the outside world, sweeping like a sunlit cloud even between himself and her, possessed it. She felt suddenly forsaken—altogether remote from him.

But he led her on, and presently they were kneeling together under a great crucifix of primitive Italian work, while through the dusk of the May evening gleamed the lamps of the chapel, and there arose on all sides of her a murmur of voices repeating the Confession. Marcia was aware of many servants and retainers; and she could see the soldierly form of Lord William kneeling in the distance, with Lady William beside him. The chapel seemed to her large and splendid. It was covered with painting and mosaic; and she felt the sharp contrast between it and the simple bareness of the house to which it was attached.

"What does all this mean?" she seemed to be asking herself. "What does it mean for me? Can I play my part in it?"

What had become of that early antagonism and revolt which she had expressed to "Waggin"? It had not protected her in the least from Newbury's growing ascendancy! She was indeed astonished at her own pliancy! In how short a time had she allowed Newbury's spell upon her to drive her earlier vague fears of his surroundings and traditions out of her mind!

And now it returned upon her intensified—that cold, indefinite fear, creeping through love and joy.

She turned again to look beseechingly at Newbury. But it seemed to her that she was forgotten. His eyes were on the altar—absorbed.

And presently, aghast, she heard her own name! In the midst of the General Thanksgiving, at the point where mention may be made of individual cases, the Chaplain suddenly paused to give thanks in a voice that possessed a natural and slightly disagreeable tremor, for the "happy betrothal of Edward Newbury and Marcia Coryston."

An audible stir and thrill ran through the chapel, subsiding at once into a gulf of intense silence. Marcia bowed her head with the rest; but her cheeks burned, and not only with a natural shyness. The eyes of all these kneeling figures seemed to be upon her, and she shrank under them. "I ought to have been asked," she thought, resentfully. "I ought to have been asked!"

When they left the chapel, Newbury, pale and smiling, bent over her appealingly.

"Darling!—you didn't mind?"

She quickly withdrew her hand from his.

"Don't you dine at half past eight? I really must go and dress."

And she hurried away, without waiting for him to guide her through the unknown house. Breathlessly she ran up-stairs and found her room. The sight of her maid moving about, of the lights on the dressing-table, of the roses, and her dress laid out upon the bed, brought her sudden and unspeakable relief. The color came back to her cheeks, she began to chatter to her maid about everything and nothing—laughing at any trifle, and yet feeling every now and then inclined to cry. Her maid dressed her in pale pink and told her plainly when the last hook was fastened and the last string tied that she had never looked better.

"But won't you put on these roses, miss?"

She pointed to the bunch that Lady William had gathered.

Marcia pinned them into her belt, and stood a moment looking at her reflection in the glass. Not in mere girlish vanity! Something much stronger and profounder entered in. She seemed to be measuring her resources against some hostile force—to be saying to herself:

"Which of us is to yield? Perhaps not I!"

Yet as soon as Marcia entered the drawing-room, rather late, to find all the party assembled, the tension of her mood dropped, thawed by the sheer kindness and good will of the people round her. Lord William was resplendent in a button-hole and new dress-clothes; Lady William had put on her best gown and some family jewels that never saw the light except on great occasions; and when Marcia entered, the friendly affectionate looks that greeted her on all sides set her blushing once more, and shamed away the hobgoblins that had been haunting her. She was taken in to dinner by Lord William and treated as a queen. The table in the long, low dining-room shone with flowers and some fine old silver which the white-haired butler had hurriedly produced from the family store. Beside Marcia's plate lay a bunch of lilies-of-the-valley which the no less ancient head gardener had gathered and tied with a true-lover's knot, in the interval between chapel and dinner. And opposite to her sat the man she was to marry, composed and gay, careful to spare his betrothed embarrassment, ready to talk politics with Sir Louis Ford and cathedral music with the Dean; yet, through it all, so radiantly and transparently happy that his father and mother, at any rate, could not look at him without melting memories of their own youth, which sometimes, and for a moment, made talk difficult.

After dinner Sir Wilfrid Bury found Lady Coryston in a secluded corner, deep in the evening papers which had just arrived. He sat down beside her.

"Well, how are you feeling?"

"If we could but revive the duel!" said Lady Coryston, looking up with eyes aflame.

"Gracious! For what and whom? Do you want to shoot your future son-in-law for taking her from you?"

"Who—Marcia? Nonsense!" said Lady Coryston, impatiently. "I was talking of this last speech of Glenwilliam's, attacking us landlords. If the duel still existed he would either never have made it or he would have been shot within twenty-four hours!"

"Hang Glenwilliam!" Sir Wilfrid's tone was brusque. "I want to talk about Marcia!"

Lady Coryston turned slowly round upon him.

"What's wrong with Marcia? I see nothing to talk about."

"Wrong! You unnatural woman! I want to know what you feel about it. Do you really like the young man? Do you think he's good enough for her?"

"Certainly I like him. A very well disposed fellow. I hope he'll manage her properly. But if you want to know what I think of his family"—she dropped her voice—"I can only say that although their virtues no doubt are legion, the atmosphere of this house is to me positively stifling. You feel it as you cross the threshold. It is an atmosphere of sheer tyranny! What on earth do they mean by bundling us into chapel like that?"

"Tyranny! You call it tyranny!" Sir Wilfrid's eyes danced.

"Certainly," said Lady Coryston, stiffly. "What else should I call it? One's soul is not one's own."

Sir Wilfrid settled down on the sofa beside her, and devoted himself to drawing her out. Satan rebuking sin was a spectacle of which he never tired, and the situation was the more amusing because he happened to have spent the morning in remonstrating with her—to no purpose whatever—on the manner in which she was treating her eldest son.