None of the young men who came down to see if they would like to be monks got as far as being accepted as a probationer until the end of May, when a certain Mr. Arthur Yarrell, an undergraduate from Keble College, Oxford, whose mind was a dictionary of ecclesiastical terms, was accepted and a month later became a postulant as Brother Augustine, to the great pleasure of Brother Raymond, who said that he really thought he should have been compelled to leave the Order if somebody had not joined it with an appreciation of historic Catholicism.  Early in June Sir Charles Horner introduced another young man called Aubrey Wyon, whom he had met at Venice in May.

“Take a little trouble over entertaining him,” Sir Charles counselled.  And then, looking round to see that no thieves or highwaymen were listening, he whispered to Mark that Wyon had money.  “He would be an asset, I fancy.  And he’s seriously thinking of joining you,” the baronet declared.

To tell the truth, Sir Charles who was beginning to be worried by the financial state of the Order of St. George, would at this crisis have tried to persuade the Devil to become a monk if the Devil would have provided a handsome dowry.  He had met Aubrey Wyon at an expensive hotel, had noticed that he was expensively dressed and drank good wine, had found that he was interested in ecclesiastical religion, and, having bragged a bit about the land he had presented to the Order of St. George, had inspired Wyon to do some bragging of what he had done for various churches.

“If I could find happiness at Malford,” Wyon had said, “I would give them all that I possess.”

Sir Charles had warned the Father Superior that he would do well to accept Wyon as a probationer, should he propose himself; and the Father Superior, who was by now as anxious for money as a company-promoter, made himself as pleasant to Wyon as he knew how, flattering him carefully and giving voice to his dreams for the great stone Abbey to be built here in days to come.

Mark took an immediate and violent dislike to the newcomer, which, had he been questioned about it, he would have attributed to his elaborate choice of socks and tie, or to his habit of perpetually tightening the leather belt he wore instead of braces, as if he would compel that flabbiness of waist caused by soft living to vanish; but to himself he admitted that the antipathy was deeper seated.

“It’s like the odour of corruption,” he murmured, though actually it was the odour of hair washes and lotions and scents that filled the guest’s cell.

However, Aubrey Wyon became for a week a probationer, ludicrously known as Brother Aubrey, after which he remained a postulant only a fortnight before he was clothed as a novice, having by then taken the name of Anthony, alleging that the inspiration to become a monk had been due to the direct intervention of St. Anthony of Padua on June 13th.

Whether Brother Anthony turned the Father Superior’s head with his promises of what he intended to give the Order when he was professed, or whether having once started he was unable to stop, there was continuous building all that summer, culminating in a decision to begin the Abbey Church.