'Why should I sigh,' she said. 'I am happier than when it was my home,—happier, and, I hope, more useful. My father doesn't want me,'—here she paused. Perhaps that father really did want her, for she, at least, loved him, and his wife did not; and she was beginning to be conscious, daily more and more conscious, of the exceeding preciousness of love.
Breakfast passed, with the same effort to feel at home on her part, and attempt to keep up a conversation on that of Lady Mary, as had the dinner of the previous day.
Harold made a diversion by bursting into the room to ask for his soldiers. He, at least, was quite natural, and entirely spoilt.
Immediately after breakfast they drove to church. It was delightful to Freda to see the good vicar in the reading-desk, and his wife in the pew beneath. She felt at home again for the first time. For the first time, also, she really listened to the worthy man's somewhat dry sermon, and strove to feel 'in charity with all men' on that blessed day. She thought once or twice of a sermon Rowland had preached that day twelvemonth, which riveted the attention of his large congregation, and made her wonder whence he had received the gift, by half-an-hour's plain eloquent preaching, of opening the heart to receive truths hitherto more understood than felt. Rowland had become to her, and many, the type of a preacher and minister of the Gospel, and to him she owed, under God, the fuller enlightenment and enlargement of her own mind.
After the service was over she went into the vicarage. Here, again, she was at home. She had much to tell Mrs Prothero of the kindness of Sir Philip Payne Perry and his wife to her, and many messages to deliver from them. She had also to hear Mr and Mrs Jonathan's opinion of Netta, and of the approaching wedding. She avoided any word that could recall Howel.
'I hope you are not displeased with the match?' said Freda.
'By no means,' was Mrs Jonathan's reply. 'I always thought Gladys very superior, and her turning out to be Mr Jones' niece removes our only objection. It is quite a romance!'
'She is a clever young woman,' said Mr Jonathan. 'I was surprised the other day to find how much history she knew. As to Wales, she has it by heart, and is not wholly unacquainted with the antiquities of the country. It was quite a pleasure for me, Miss Gwynne, I assure you, to meet with any one who took so much interest in ancient lore. And now she is to be one of the family she is so much more at her ease. Actually asked me, of her own accord, of the fossils in the Park quarry, and a very acute question concerning the lords of the marches. She even knew that her name, Gladys, meant Claudia, and that the original Gladys is, probably, the very Claudia mentioned by St Paul.'
'We shall all be thrown into the shade now, Mrs Prothero,' said Freda, laughing. 'Gladys will evidently be the favourite.'
'I am afraid I must break up your conversation, my love,' interrupted Lady Mary. 'You can drive or ride over to finish it when you like.'