But St. Rest was not a town.  It was a tiny village apart,—­utterly free from the petty pretensions of its nearest neighbour, Riversford, which considered itself almost ‘metropolitan’ on account of its modern red-brick and stucco villas into which its trades-people ‘retired’ as soon as they had made enough money to be able to pretend that they had never stood behind a counter in their lives.  St. Rest, on the contrary, was simple in its tastes,—­so simple as to be almost primitive, particularly in its religious sentiments, which the ministry of John Walden had, so far, kept faithful and pure.  Its atmosphere was therefore utterly at variance with the cheap atheism of the modern world, and it was this discordancy which struck so sharply on Maryllia’s emotional nature and gave her such a sense of unaccustomed pain.

At the Manor there were a few other visitors who had not attended church,—­none of them important, except to themselves and the society paragraphist,—­none of them distinguished as ever having done anything particularly good, or useful in the world,—­and none of them possessing any very unconventional characteristics, with the exception of two very quaint old ladies, who were known somewhat irreverently among their acquaintances as the ‘Sisters Gemini.’  They were of good birth and connection, but, being cast adrift as wrecks on the shores of Time,—­the one as a widow, the other as a spinster,—­had sworn eternal friendship on the altar of their several disillusioned and immolated affections.  In the present day we are not overtroubled by any scruples of reverence for either old widowhood or old spinsterhood; and the ‘Sisters Gemini’ had become a standing joke with the self-styled ‘wise and witty’ of London restaurants and late suppers.  Lady Wicketts and Miss Fosby were their actual names, and they were happily unconscious of the unfeeling sobriquet bestowed upon them when they were out of hearing.  Lady Wicketts had once been a reigning ‘beauty,’ and she lived on the reputation of that glorious past.  Miss Fosby aided and abetted her in this harmless self-deception.  Lady Wicketts had been painted by all the famous artists of her era, from the time of her seventeeth birthday to her thirtieth.  She had been represented as a ‘Shepherdess,’ a ‘Madonna,’ a ‘Girl with Lilies,’ a ’Lady with a Greyhound,’ a ‘Nymph Sleeping,’ and more briefly and to the purpose, as ‘Portrait of Lady Wicketts,’ in every exhibition of pictures that had been held during her youth and prime.  Miss Fosby carried prints and photographs of these works of art everywhere about with her.  She would surprise people by casually taking one of them out of her album and saying softly “Isn’t that beautiful?”

And then, if the beholders fell into the trap and uttered exclamations of rapture at the ‘Shepherdess’ or the ‘Madonna,’ or whatever allegorical subject it happened to be, she would smile triumphantly and say-’Lady Wicketts!’—­to all appearance enjoying the violent shock of incredulous amazement which her announcement invariably inflicted on all those who received it.