Her mother had cultivated her love for Ormersfield, and she was charmed by her visits to old haunts, well remembering everything.  She gladly recognised the little low-browed church, the dumpy tower, and grave-yard rising so high that it seemed to intend to bury the church itself, and permitted many a view, through the lattices, of the seats, and the Fitzjocelyn hatchments and monuments.

She lingered after church on Sunday afternoon with Mrs. Frost to look at Lady Fitzjocelyn’s monument.  It was in the chancel, a recumbent figure in white marble, as if newly fallen asleep, and with the lovely features chiselled from a cast taken after death had fixed and ennobled their beauty.

‘It is just like Louis’s profile!’ said Mrs. Frost, as they came out.

‘Well,’ said Louis, who was nearer than she was aware, ’I hope at least no one will make me the occasion of a lion when I am dead.’

‘It is very beautiful,’ said Mary.

’May be so; but the sentiment is destroyed by its having been six months in the Royal Academy, number 16,136, and by seeing it down among the excursions in the Northwold Guide.’

‘Louis, my dear, you should not be satirical on this,’ said Mrs. Frost.

‘I never meant it,’ said Louis, ’but I never could love that monument.  It used to oppress me with a sense of having a white marble mother!  And, seriously, it fills up the chancel as if it were its show-room, according to our family tradition that the church is dedicated to the Fitzjocelyns.  Living or dead, we have taken it all to ourselves.’

‘It was a very fair, respectable congregation,’ said his aunt.

’Exactly so.  That is my complaint.  Everything belonging to his lordship is respectable—­except his son.’

’Take care, Louis; here is Mary looking as if she would take you at your word.’

’Pray, Mary, do they let no one who is not respectable go to church in Peru?’

’I do not think you would change your congregation for the wretched crowds of brown beggars,’ said Mary.

‘Would I not?’ cried Louis.  ’Oh! if the analogous class here in England could but feel that the church was for them!—­not driven out and thrust aside, by our respectability.’

‘Marksedge to wit!’ said a good-humoured voice, as Mr. Holdsworth, the young Vicar, appeared at his own wicket, with a hearty greeting.  ’I never hear those words without knowing where you are, Fitzjocelyn.’

‘I hope to be there literally some day this week,’ said Louis.  ’Will you walk with me?  I want to ask old Madison how his grandson goes on.  I missed going to see after the boy last time I was at home.’

’I fear he has not been going on well, and have been sorry for it ever since,’ said the Vicar.  ’His master told me that he found him very idle and saucy.’

‘People of that sort never know how to speak to a lad,’ said Louis.  ‘It is their own rating that they ought to blame.’