evening did the moment
so dreaded by Miss St. Quentin actually arrive. In furtherance of delay
she practised a diplomacy not altogether flattering to her
self-respect, coming down rather late for dinner, and retiring
immediately after that meal to the Gun-Room, under plea of
correspondence which must be posted at Farley in time for to-morrow's
day mail. She was even late for prayers in the chapel, so that, taking
her accustomed place next to Lady Calmady in the last but one of the
stalls upon the epistle-side, she found all the members of the
household, gentle and simple alike, already upon their knees. The
household mustered strong that night, a testimony, it may be supposed,
to feudal as much as to religious feeling. In the seats immediately
below her were an array of women-servants, declining from the high
dignities of Mrs. Reynolds the housekeeper, the faithful Clara, and her
own lanky and loyal north-country woman Faulstich, to a very youthful
scullery maid, sitting just without the altar rails at the end of the
long row. Opposite were not only Winter, Bates the steward, Powell,
Andrews, and the other men-servants, but Chaplin, heading a detachment
from the house stables, and--unexampled occurrence!--Gnudi the Italian
_chef_, with his air of gentle and philosophic melancholy and his
anarchic sentiments in theology and politics, liable,--these last--when
enlarged on, to cause much fluttering in the dove-cote of the
housekeeper's room.--"To hear Signer Gnudi talk sometimes made your
blood run cold. It seemed as if you couldn't be safe anywhere from
those wicked foreign barricades and massacres," as Clara put it. And
yet, in point of fact, no milder man ever larded a woodcock or stuffed
it with truffles.

Alone, behind all these, in the first of the row of stalls with their
carven spires and dark vaulted canopies, sat Richard Calmady, whom all
his people had thus come forth silently to welcome. But, through prayer
and psalm and lesson alike, as Miss St. Quentin noted, he remained
immovable, to her almost alarmingly cold and self-concentrated. Only
once he turned his head, leaning a little forward and looking towards
the purple, and silver, and fair, white flowers of the altar, and the
clear shining of the altar lights.

"Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an
hungered and fed thee? or thirsty and gave thee drink? When saw we thee
a stranger, and took thee in? or naked and clothed thee