With a cautious eye on the wolf, she approached the yew hedge.

“Larry!  Father Sweeny’s at the hall door.  You must ask him in to lunch!”

To herself she thought:  “He’s Larry’s affair, thank goodness!  And I’ll see that my young man does his duty!”

When Frederica spoke of, or to, her nephew, as “my young man,” it was generally in connection with what she felt to be his duty, and felt also that it was her duty to see that his was not shirked.

Father Tim Sweeny, at lunch, at the house of his chief parishioner, was a very different being from the damaged and ferocious bull in hospital.  Conscious of his priestly dignity and of the need of supporting it, but shaken by the minor stresses of the situation, the senseless multiplicity of forks and spoons, the bewildering restrictions by which he felt himself to be webbed about, hampered, mastered, Father Tim was as a wild bull in a net, and was even pathetic in his unavailing efforts to prove himself equal to his surroundings.  He cleared his throat at intervals, with an authority that seemed to prelude something more epoch-making than an assent to one of Frederica’s industrious platitudes; he snuffled and fidgeted, eating scarcely at all, and repelling the reverential assiduities of the servants with shattering abruptness.

“Christian saved the situation,” Frederica said, in subsequent conversation with the Reverend Charles Fetherston; she absolutely ‘charmed him to a smile.’  She said afterwards that the smile made her think of a Druidic stone circle, slightly imperfect from age!  She always thinks of absurd things; but I was grateful to her!  She has an amazing gift for setting people at their ease.”

“I’m not sure that our respected friend might not be more tolerable when he was not at his ease!” said the Reverend Charles.

“Larry simply sulked,” continued Miss Coppinger; “I’m afraid Paris life does not inculcate much respect for religion.”

“Very possibly!” said the Reverend Charles, non-committally.  “I feel for poor Sweeny!  He knows now what Purgatory is like!”

“I assure you I was as civil as I knew how to be,” asserted Frederica.

“I’m sure you were!” said the Reverend Charles, stuffing a pipe as he spoke, and sniggering into the bowl.

Miss Coppinger was justified in believing that Christian had been a success with Father Sweeny.

“I declare I could like that gerr’l, Christian Lowry,” he said to Father Greer.  “She’s a good gerr’l enough.  Decent!  Civil!” Each adjective of approval was launched on a snort that indicated some co-existing irritation; “but I have me own opinion of young Coppinger!”

“A good one?” simpered Father Greer.

“The reverrse!” said Father Tim, and a least four r’s rang and rolled in the word.

CHAPTER XXVI

The portrait of that civil and decent girl, Christian Talbot Lowry, was finished; it had been conveyed to Mount Music and was there established on an easel in the billiard-room The artist and the model, having raised and lowered blinds and arranged curtains to their liking, or as nearly to that unattainable ideal as circumstances permitted, were now recovering from the criticism of their relations on the completed work.