oo, had hesitated, and had suggested that perhaps
the matter might be postponed. His august daughters, though they
had learned to hold the name of Fenwick in proper abhorrence,
nevertheless were grieved about the chapel. Men and women were
talking about it, and the words of the common people found their way
to the august daughters of the house of Stowte.

"Papa," said Lady Carolina; "wouldn't it, perhaps, be better to build
the Bullhampton chapel a little farther off from the Vicarage?"

"The next vicar might be a different sort of person," said the Lady
Sophie.

"No; it wouldn't," said the Earl, who was apt to be very imperious
with his own daughters, although he was of opinion that they should
be held in great awe by all the world--excepting only himself and
their eldest brother.

That eldest brother, Lord Saint George, was in truth regarded at
Turnover as being, of all persons in the world, the most august.
The Marquis himself was afraid of his son, and held him in extreme
veneration. To the mind of the Marquis the heir expectant of all the
dignities of the House of Stowte was almost a greater man than the
owner of them; and this feeling came not only from a consciousness
on the part of the father that his son was a bigger man than himself,
cleverer, better versed in the affairs of the world, and more thought
of by those around them, but also to a certain extent from an idea
that he who would have all these grand things thirty or perhaps even
fifty years hence, must be more powerful than one with whom their
possession would come to an end probably after the lapse of eight
or ten years. His heir was to him almost divine. When things at
the castle were in any way uncomfortable, he could put up with the
discomfort for himself and his daughters; but it was not to be
endured that Saint George should be incommoded. Old carriage-horses
must be changed if he were coming; the glazing of the new greenhouse
must be got out of the way, lest he should smell the paint; the game
must not be touched till he should come to shoot it. And yet Lord
Saint George himself was a man who never gave himself any airs; and
who in his personal intercourse with the world around him demanded
much less acknowledgment of his magnificence than did his father.

And now, during this Easter week, Lord Saint George came down to
the castle, intending to kill two birds with one stone, to take his
parliamentary holiday, and to do a little business wit