“James,” said Mrs. Gresley, with decision, “it is your duty to speak to Hester about attending early service.  If she can go out in the garden she can come to church.”

“I have spoken to her once,” said Mr. Gresley, frowning, “and though I put it before her very plainly she showed great obstinacy.  Fond as I am of Hester, I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that she has an arrogant and callous nature.  But we must remember, my love, that Aunt Susan was most lax in all her views, and we must make allowance for Hester, who lived with her till last year.  It is only natural that Hester, bred up from childhood in that worldly circle—­dinner-parties all through Lent, and Sunday luncheons—­should have fallen through want of solid church teaching into freethinking and ideas of her own upon religion.”

Mr. Gresley’s voice was of that peculiar metallic note which carries farther than the owner is aware.  It rose, if contradicted, into a sort of continuous trumpet-blast which drowned all other lesser voices.  Hester’s little garret was two stories above Mr. Gresley’s study on the ground floor, but, nevertheless, she often heard confused, anxious parochial buzzings overwhelmed by that sustained high note which knew no cessation until objection or opposition ceased.  As she came towards them, she heard with perfect distinctness what he was saying, but it did not trouble her.  Hester was gifted with imagination, and imagination does not find it difficult to read by the shorthand of the expressions and habitual opinions and repressions of others what they occasionally say at full length, and to which they fondly believe they are giving utterance for the first time.  Mr. Gresley had said all this many times already by his manner, and it had by its vain repetitions lost its novelty.  Mr. Gresley was fortunately not aware of this, for unimaginative persons believe themselves to be sealed books, as hermetically sealed as the characters of others are to themselves.

Hester was very like her brother.  She had the same nose, slightly too long for her small face, the same short upper lip and light hair, only her brother’s was straight and hers was crimped, as wet sand is crimped by a placid outgoing sea.  That she had an equally strong will was obvious.  But there the likeness ended.  Hester’s figure was slight, and she stooped a little.  Hester’s eyes were very gentle, very appealing under their long, curled lashes.  They were sad, too, as Mr. Gresley’s never were, gay as his never were.  An infinite patience looked out of them sometimes, that patience of enthusiasm which will cast away its very soul and all its best years for the sake of an ideal.  Hester showed her age in her eyes.  She was seven-and-twenty, and appeared many years younger until she looked at you.

Mrs. Gresley looked with veiled irritation at her sister-in-law in her clean holland gown, held in at the waist with a broad lilac ribbon, adroitly drawn in picturesque folds through a little silver buckle.