Indeed, the Vicomte, who had a theory concerning Mr. Spence’s church-going, was not far from wrong.  As may have been suspected, it was to Honora that credit was due.  It was Honora whom Mr. Spence sought after breakfast, and to whom he declared that her presence alone prevented him from leaving that afternoon.  It was Honora who told him that he ought to be ashamed of himself.  And it was to Honora, after church was over and they were walking homeward together along the dusty road, that Mr. Spence remarked by way of a delicate compliment that “the morning had not been a total loss, after all!”

The little Presbyterian church stood on a hillside just outside of the village and was, as far as possible, the possession of the Holt family.  The morning sunshine illuminated the angels in the Holt memorial window, and the inmates of the Holt Institution occupied all the back pews.  Mrs. Joshua played the organ, and Susan, with several young women and a young man with a long coat and plastered hair, sang in the choir.  The sermon of the elderly minister had to do with beliefs rather than deeds, and was the subject of discussion at luncheon.

“It is very like a sermon I found in my room,” said Honora.

“I left that book in your room, my dear, in the hope that you would not overlook it,” said Mrs. Holt, approvingly.  “Joshua, I wish you would read that sermon aloud to us.”

“Oh, do, Mr. Holt!” begged Honora.

The Vicomte, who had been acting very strangely during the meal, showed unmistakable signs of a futile anger.  He had asked Honora to walk with him.

“Of course,” added Mrs. Holt, “no one need listen who doesn’t wish to.  Since you were good enough to reconsider your decision and attend divine service, Howard, I suppose I should be satisfied.”

The reading took place in the library.  Through the open window Honora perceived the form of Joshua asleep in the hammock, his Sunday coat all twisted under him.  It worried her to picture his attire when he should wake up.  Once Mrs. Robert looked in, smiled, said nothing, and went out again.  At length, in a wicker chair under a distant tree on the lawn, Honora beheld the dejected outline of the Vicomte.  He was trying to read, but every once in a while would lay down his book and gaze protractedly at the house, stroking his mustache.  The low song of the bees around the shrubbery vied with Mr. Holt’s slow reading.  On the whole, the situation delighted Honora, who bit her lip to refrain from smiling at M. de Toqueville.  When at last she emerged from the library, he rose precipitately and came towards her across the lawn, lifting his hands towards the pitiless puritan skies.

“Enfin!” he exclaimed tragically.  “Ah, Mademoiselle, never in my life have I passed such a day!”

“Are you ill, Vicomte?” she asked.

“Ill!  Were it not for you, I would be gone.  You alone sustain me—­it is for the pleasure of seeing you that I suffer.  What kind of a menage is this, then, where I am walked around Institutions, where I am forced to listen to the exposition of doctrines, where the coffee is weak, where Sunday, which the bon Dieu set aside for a jour de fete resembles to a day in purgatory?”