It had been an untoward day.  He had been striving hard against the stream at Willansborough.  The drainage was not only scouted as an absurd, unreasonable, and expensive fancy, but the architect whom he had recommended, in the hope that he would insist on ground-work which might bring on the improvement, had been rejected in favour of a kinsman of Mr. Briggs, the out-going mayor, a youth of the lower walk of the profession—­not the scholar and gentleman he had desired, for the tradesman intellect fancied such a person would be expensive and unmanageable.

Twin plans for church and town-hall had been produced, which to Raymond’s taste savoured of the gimcrack style, but which infinitely delighted all the corporation; and where he was the only cultivated gentleman, except the timid Vicar, his reasonings were all in vain.  The plan was accepted for the town-hall, and the specifications were ordered to be made out for competition, and a rate decided on.  The church was to wait for subscription and bazaar; the drains, for reason in Wil’sbro’, or for the hope of the mayoralty of Mr. Whitlock, a very intelligent and superior linendraper.

CHAPTER XI Rosamond’s Apologue

Pray, sir, do you laugh at me?—­Title of Old Caricature

Was Cecil’s allegiance to Dunstone, or was it to the heiress of Dunstone?  Tests of allegiance consist in very small matters, and it is not always easy to see the turning-point.  Now Cecil had always stood on a pinnacle at Dunstone, and she had found neither its claims nor her own recognized at Compton.  One kind of allegiance would have remained on the level, and retained the same standard, whether accepted or not.  Another would climb on any pinnacle that any one would erect for the purpose, and become alienated from whatever interfered with such eminence.

So as nobody seemed so willing to own Cecil’s claims to county supremacy as Lady Tyrrell, her bias was all towards Sirenwood; and whereas such practices as prevailed at Dunstone evidently were viewed as obsolete and narrow by these new friends, Cecil was willing to prove herself superior to them, and was far more irritated than convinced when her husband appealed to her former habits.

The separation of the welfare of body and soul had never occurred to the beneficence of Dunstone, and it cost Cecil a qualm to accept it; but she could not be a goody in the eyes of Sirenwood; and besides, she was reading some contemporary literature, which made it plain that any religious instruction was a most unjustifiable interference with the great law, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” and so, when she met Anne with a handful of texts neatly written out in printing letters, she administered her warning.

Cecil and Anne had become allies to a certain extent, chiefly through their joint disapproval of Rosamond, not to say of Julius; and the order was so amazing that Anne did not at first take it in; and when she understood that all mention of religion was forbidden, she said, “I do not think I ought to yield in this.”