Presently I was summoned to supper.  I followed the young lady who had been sent to call me, down the wide shallow stairs, into the great hall, through which I had first passed on my way to my Lady Ludlow’s room.  There were four other young gentlewomen, all standing, and all silent, who curtsied to me when I first came in.  They were dressed in a kind of uniform:  muslin caps bound round their heads with blue ribbons, plain muslin handkerchiefs, lawn aprons, and drab-coloured stuff gowns.  They were all gathered together at a little distance from the table, on which were placed a couple of cold chickens, a salad, and a fruit tart.  On the dais there was a smaller round table, on which stood a silver jug filled with milk, and a small roll.  Near that was set a carved chair, with a countess’s coronet surmounting the back of it.  I thought that some one might have spoken to me; but they were shy, and I was shy; or else there was some other reason; but, indeed, almost the minute after I had come into the hall by the door at the lower hand, her ladyship entered by the door opening upon the dais; whereupon we all curtsied very low; I because I saw the others do it.  She stood, and looked at us for a moment.

“Young gentlewomen,” said she, “make Margaret Dawson welcome among you;” and they treated me with the kind politeness due to a stranger, but still without any talking beyond what was required for the purposes of the meal.  After it was over, and grace was said by one of our party, my lady rang her hand-bell, and the servants came in and cleared away the supper things:  then they brought in a portable reading-desk, which was placed on the dais, and, the whole household trooping in, my lady called to one of my companions to come up and read the Psalms and Lessons for the day.  I remember thinking how afraid I should have been had I been in her place.  There were no prayers.  My lady thought it schismatic to have any prayers excepting those in the Prayer-book; and would as soon have preached a sermon herself in the parish church, as have allowed any one not a deacon at the least to read prayers in a private dwelling-house.  I am not sure that even then she would have approved of his reading them in an unconsecrated place.

She had been maid of honour to Queen Charlotte:  a Hanbury of that old stock that flourished in the days of the Plantagenets, and heiress of all the land that remained to the family, of the great estates which had once stretched into four separate counties.  Hanbury Court was hers by right.  She had married Lord Ludlow, and had lived for many years at his various seats, and away from her ancestral home.  She had lost all her children but one, and most of them had died at these houses of Lord Ludlow’s; and, I dare say, that gave my lady a distaste to the places, and a longing to come back to Hanbury Court, where she had been so happy as a girl.  I imagine her girlhood had been the happiest time of her life; for,