And I must admit that as I paced the lawn in front of the house my sympathies were very markedly with old Jervaise.  It hurt me to remember that look of apprehension he had worn at breakfast.  I wanted, almost passionately, to defend him from the possibly heart-breaking consequences that might arise from no fault of his own.

I was still pondering these feelings of compassion for my host, when the church-party emerged from the front door of the Hall.  If my watch were right they were very late.  Mr. Sturton and his congregation would have to wait ten minutes or so in patient expectation before they could begin their devotions.  And I would gladly have effaced myself if only to save the Jervaises the vexation of a still further delay.  But I was too near the line of their approach.  Any attempt at retreat would have been a positive rudeness.

I was framing an apology for not accompanying them to church as they came up—­Mrs. Jervaise and her daughter leading, with their three visitors in a bunch behind.  But I was spared the necessity to offer what would certainly have been a transparent and foolish excuse for absenting myself from their religious observances.  Mrs. Jervaise pulled herself together as the party approached me.  She had had her head down even more than usual as they came out of the Hall, as if she were determined to butt her way through any further obstacles that might intervene between her and her duty as a Christian.  At sight of me, however, she obviously stiffened.  She almost held herself erect as she faced me; and her hawk nose jerked up like the head of a pick.

“So you’re not coming with us, Mr. Melhuish?” she said.

“I hope you will excuse me,” I replied with, I hope, a proper air of courtesy.

“Of course,” she said stiffly, her nose still balanced, as it were, in preparation to strike.  Then she lowered her head with the air of one who carefully replaces a weapon, and mumbling something about being “dreadfully late as it was,” continued her interrupted plunging into the resistances that separated her from her goal.  The others followed, as if they were being trailed in her wake by invisible hawsers.  None of them took any notice of me—­particularly Miss Tattersall, whose failure to see me was a marked and positive act of omission.

I realised that I had been disapproved and snubbed, but I was not at all distressed by the fact.  I put it all down to my failure in piety, begun with my absence from prayers and now accentuated by my absence from church.  Olive, Nora Bailey, and Hughes had, I supposed, followed Mrs. Jervaise’s lead in duty bound, and I knew nearly enough why Miss Tattersall had cut me.  I had no idea, then, that I had come under suspicion of a far more serious offence than that of a sectarian nonconformity.  Indeed, I hardly gave the matter a moment’s attention.  The composition of the church-party had provided me with material for further speculation concerning the subject that was absorbing all my interest.  Why were old Jervaise and his son also absent from the tale of those devoted pilgrims?  Was that interview in the Hall developing some crucial situation, and had Frank been called in?  One thing was certain:  Banks had not, as yet, come out.  I had kept my eye on the front door.  I could not possibly have missed him.