“Dear, dear!” murmured Mrs. Roughsedge.

“And money is improperly given away.  Several people whom the Vicar thinks most unfit objects of charity have been assisted.  And in a conversation with her last week Miss Mallory expressed herself in a very sad way about foreign missions.  Her father’s idea, again, no doubt—­but it is all very distressing.  The Vicar doubts”—­Miss Maria spoke warily, bringing her face very close to the gray curls—­“whether she has ever been confirmed.”

This final stroke, however, fell flat.  Mrs. Roughsedge showed no emotion.  “Most of my aunts,” she said, stoutly, “were never confirmed, and they were good Christians and communicants all their lives.”

Miss Maria’s expression showed that this reference to a preceding barbaric age of the Church had no relevance to the existing order of things.

“Of course,” she added, hastily, “I do not wish to make myself troublesome or conspicuous in any way.  I merely mention these things as explaining why the Vicar felt bound to make a stand.  The Church feeling in this parish has been so strong it would, indeed, be a pity if anything occurred to weaken it.”

Mrs. Roughsedge gave a doubtful assent.  As to the Church feeling, she was not so clear as Miss Bertram.  One of her chief friends was a secularist cobbler who lived under the very shadow of the church.  The Miss Bertrams shuddered at his conversation.  Mrs. Roughsedge found him racy company, and he presented to her aspects of village life and opinion with which the Miss Bertrams were not at all acquainted.

* * * * *

As the mother and son approached the old house in the sunset light, its aspect of mellow and intimate congruity with the woods and fields about it had never been more winning.  The red, gray, and orange of its old brickwork played into the brown and purples of its engirdling trees, into the lilacs and golds and crimsons of the western sky behind it, into the cool and quiet tones of the meadows from which it rose.  A spirit of beauty had been at work fusing man’s perishable and passing work with Nature’s eternal masterpiece; so that the old house had in it something immortal, and the light which played upon it something gently personal, relative, and fleeting.  Winter was still dominant; a northeast wind blew.  But on the grass under the spreading oaks which sheltered the eastern front a few snow-drops were out.  And Diana was gathering them.

She came toward her visitors with alacrity.  “Oh! what a long time since you have been to see me!”

Mrs. Roughsedge explained that she had been entertaining some relations, and Hugh had been in London.  She hoped that Miss Mallory had enjoyed her stay at Tallyn.  It certainly seemed to both mother and son that the ingenuous young face colored a little as its owner replied—­“Thank you—­it was very amusing”—­and then added, with a little hesitation—­“Mr. Marsham has been kindly advising me since, about the gardens—­and the Vavasours. They were to keep up the gardens, you know—­and now they practically leave it to me—­which isn’t fair.”