effect; it seemed that no lady could sit down without bending a clean starched petticoat, and no gentleman could breathe without a sudden crackle from a stiff shirt-front.  As the hands of the clock neared eleven, on this particular Sunday, various people tended to draw together in the hall, clasping little red-leaved books in their hands.  The clock marked a few minutes to the hour when a stout black figure passed through the hall with a preoccupied expression, as though he would rather not recognise salutations, although aware of them, and disappeared down the corridor which led from it.

“Mr. Bax,” Mrs. Thornbury whispered.

The little group of people then began to move off in the same direction as the stout black figure.  Looked at in an odd way by people who made no effort to join them, they moved with one exception slowly and consciously towards the stairs.  Mrs. Flushing was the exception.  She came running downstairs, strode across the hall, joined the procession much out of breath, demanding of Mrs. Thornbury in an agitated whisper, “Where, where?”

“We are all going,” said Mrs. Thornbury gently, and soon they were descending the stairs two by two.  Rachel was among the first to descend.  She did not see that Terence and Hirst came in at the rear possessed of no black volume, but of one thin book bound in light-blue cloth, which St. John carried under his arm.

The chapel was the old chapel of the monks.  It was a profound cool place where they had said Mass for hundreds of years, and done penance in the cold moonlight, and worshipped old brown pictures and carved saints which stood with upraised hands of blessing in the hollows in the walls.  The transition from Catholic to Protestant worship had been bridged by a time of disuse, when there were no services, and the place was used for storing jars of oil, liqueur, and deck-chairs; the hotel flourishing, some religious body had taken the place in hand, and it was now fitted out with a number of glazed yellow benches, claret-coloured footstools; it had a small pulpit, and a brass eagle carrying the Bible on its back, while the piety of different women had supplied ugly squares of carpet, and long strips of embroidery heavily wrought with monograms in gold.

As the congregation entered they were met by mild sweet chords issuing from a harmonium, where Miss Willett, concealed from view by a baize curtain, struck emphatic chords with uncertain fingers.  The sound spread through the chapel as the rings of water spread from a fallen stone.  The twenty or twenty-five people who composed the congregation first bowed their heads and then sat up and looked about them.  It was very quiet, and the light down here seemed paler than the light above.  The usual bows and smiles were dispensed with, but they recognised each other.  The Lord’s Prayer was read over them.  As the childlike battle of voices rose, the congregation, many of whom had only met on the staircase, felt themselves