“My dear,” she said to Anne, “I hoped you were in bed.”

“I thought I would wait for family worship.”

“I am afraid we don’t have prayers at night, my dear.  We must resume them in the morning, now Raymond and Julius are come.”

Poor Anne looked all the whiter, and only mumbled out a few answers to the kind counsels lavished upon her.  Mrs. Poynsett was left to think over her daughters-in-law.

Lady Rosamond did not occupy her much.  There was evidently plenty of good strong love between her and her husband; and though her training might not have been the best for a clergyman’s wife, there was substance enough in both to shake down together in time.

But it was Raymond who made her uneasy—­Raymond, who ever since his father’s death had been more than all her other sons to her.  She had armed herself against the pang of not being first with him, and now she was full of vague anxiety at the sense that she still held her old position.  Had he not sat all the evening in his own place by her sofa, as if it were the very kernel of home and of repose?  And whenever a sense of duty prompted her to suggest fetching his wife, had he not lingered, and gone on talking?  It was indeed of Cecil; but how would she have liked his father, at the honeymoon’s end, to prefer talking of her to talking with her?  “She has been most carefully brought up, and is very intelligent and industrious,” said Raymond.  His mother could not help wondering whether a Roman son might not thus have described a highly accomplished Greek slave, just brought home for his mother’s use.

CHAPTER III Parish Explorations

A cry more tuneable
Was never holla’d to, nor cheer’d with horn,
In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly: 
Judge, when you hear.—­But, soft; what nymphs are these? 
Midsummer Night’s Dream

It was quite true that Cecil Charnock Poynsett was a very intelligent industrious creature, very carefully brought up—­nay, if possible, a little too much so.  “A little wholesome neglect” had been lacking.

The only child of her parents who had lived to see a second birthday was sure to be the centre of solicitude.  She had not been spoilt in the usual acceptation of the word, for she had no liberty, fewer indulgences and luxuries than many children, and never was permitted to be naughty; but then she was quite aware that each dainty or each pleasure was granted or withheld from a careful consideration of her welfare, and that nothing came by chance with her.  And on her rare ebullitions of self-will, mamma, governess, nurse, nay even papa, were all in sorrowful commotion till their princess had been brought to a sense of the enormity of her fault.