“You can’t.  You know perfectly well what a beastly shame it is.”

That roused him.

“You seem to think no more of Essy’s sin than Essy does.”

“How do you know what Essy thinks?  How do I know?  It isn’t any business of ours what Essy thinks.  It’s what we do.  I’d rather do what Essy’s done, any day, than do mean or cruel things.  Wouldn’t you?”

The Vicar raised his eyebrows and his shoulders.  It was the gesture of a man helpless before the unspeakable.

He took refuge in his pathos.

“I am very tired, Gwenda; and it’s ten minutes to ten.”

* * * * *

It may have been because the Vicar was tired that his mind wandered somewhat that night during family prayers.

Foremost among the many things that the Vicar’s mind refused to consider was the question of the status, of the very existence, of family prayers in his household.

But for Essy, though the Vicar did not know it, it was doubtful whether family prayers would have survived what he called his daughters’ godlessness.  Mary, to be sure, conformed outwardly.  She was not easily irritated, and, as she put it, she did not really mind prayers.  But to Alice and Gwendolen prayers were a weariness and an exasperation.  Alice would evade them under any pretext.  By her father’s action in transporting her to Gardale, she considered that she was absolved from her filial allegiance.  But Gwendolen was loyal.  In the matter of prayers, which—­she made it perfectly clear to Alice and Mary—­could not possibly annoy them more than they did her, she was going to see Papa through.  It would be beastly, she said, not to.  They couldn’t give him away before Essy.

But of the clemency and generosity of Gwendolen’s attitude Mr. Cartaret was not aware.  He believed that the custom of prayers was maintained in his household by his inflexible authority and will.  He gloried in them as an expression of his power.  They were a form of coercion which it seemed he could apply quite successfully to his womenkind, those creatures of his flesh and blood, yet so alien and intractable.  Family prayers gave him a keener spiritual satisfaction than the church services in which, outwardly, he cut a far more imposing figure.  In a countryside peopled mainly by abominable Wesleyans and impure Baptists (Mr. Cartaret spoke and thought of Wesleyans and Baptists as if they were abominable and impure pure) he had some difficulty in procuring a congregation.  The few who came to the parish church came because it was respectable and therefore profitable, or because they had got into the habit and couldn’t well get out of it, or because they liked it, not at all because his will and his authority compelled them.  But to emerge from his study inevitably at ten o’clock, an hour when the souls of Mary and Gwendolen and Alice were most reluctant and most hostile to the thought of prayers, and by sheer worrying to round up the fugitives, whatever they happened to be doing and wherever they happened to be, this (though he said it was no pleasure to him) was more agreeable to Mr. Cartaret than he knew.  The very fact that Essy was a Wesleyan and so far an unwilling conformist gave a peculiar zest to the performance.