Heaven be thanked that he was unconcerned on the point of garb!  Inferiority in that respect would have been fatal to his ease.  His clothes were not too new, and in quality were such as he had the habit of wearing.  The Warricombes must have immediately detected any pretentiousness, were it but in a necktie; that would impress them more unfavourably than signs of poverty.  But he defied inspection.  Not Sidwell herself, doubtless sensitive in the highest degree, could conceive a prejudice against him on this account.

His misgivings were overcome.  If these people were acquainted with the ‘dining-rooms’ joke, it certainly did not affect their behaviour to him, and he could hope, by the force of his personality, to obliterate from their minds such disagreeable thoughts as they might secretly entertain.  Surely he could make good his claim to be deemed a gentleman.  To Buckland he had declared his position, and no shame attached to it.  A man of scientific tastes, like Mr. Warricombe, must consider it respectable enough.  Grant him a little time, and why should he not become a recognised friend of this family?

If he were but resident in Exeter.

For the first time, he lost himself in abstraction, and only an inquiry from Sidwell recalled him.

‘You have seen the Cathedral, Mr. Peak?’

‘Oh yes!  I attended service there yesterday morning.’

Had he reflected, perhaps he would not have added this circumstance; even in speaking he suffered a confused doubtfulness.  But as soon as the words were uttered, he felt strangely glad.  Sidwell bestowed upon him an unmistakable look of approval; her mother gazed with colder interest; Mr. Warricombe regarded him, and mused; Buckland, a smile of peculiar meaning on his close lips, glanced from him to Miss Moorhouse.

‘Ah, then, you heard Canon Grayling,’ remarked the father of the family, with something in his tone which answered to Sidwell’s facial expression.  ‘How did you like his sermon?’

Godwin was trifling with a pair of nut-crackers, but the nervousness evident in his fingers did not prevent him from replying with a natural air of deliberation.

’I was especially struck with the passage about the barren fig-tree.’

The words might have expressed a truth, but in that case a tone of sarcasm must have winged them.  As it was, they involved either hypocrisy or ungenerous irony at the expense of his questioner.  Buckland could not but understand them in the latter sense; his face darkened.  At that moment, Peak met his eye, and encountered its steady searching gaze with a perfectly calm smile.  Half-a-dozen pulsings of his heart—­violent, painful, and the fatal hour of his life had struck.

‘What had he to say about it?’ Buckland asked, carelessly.