“Ay, I’m coming to the gate with you. I’ll tell Tom Holler where to take ye; it’s in or about three miles. You’d like a few white flowers? The lilies are just a wonder for beauty.”
“No, no, no. I won’t trouble you. I won’t take them,” she protested tremulously.
“Oh, but indeed you must!” Mrs. Holt was determined that, as far as lay in her power, Mrs. Wynne should respect les convenances, and, seizing a knife as they passed through the kitchen, cut quite a sheaf of white lilies, whilst Madeline stood apathetically beside her, as if she was a girl in a dream.
Monks Norton was an old, a very old grey country church, thickly surrounded by gravestones—a picturesque place on the side of a hill, far away from any habitation, save the clerk’s cottage and a pretty old rectory house smothered in ivy.
As Madeline pushed open the heavy lych gate, she was aware that she was not the only visitor to the churchyard. On a walk some little way off stood two smartly dressed girls, whom she knew—London acquaintances—and an elderly gentleman, with a High Church waistcoat, apparently the rector.
They had their backs turned towards her, and were talking in a very animated manner. They paused for a second as they noticed a tall lady turn slowly down a pathway, as if she was looking for something—for a grave, of course. Then resumed their discussion, just where they had left it off.
“It’s too sweet!” said one of the girls rapturously, “quite a beautiful idea, and you say put up recently?”
“Yes,” assented the rector, who took a personal pride in all the nice new tombstones, “only last Saturday week. It’s quite a work of art, is it not?”
“Yes,” returned the second lady. “You say that it was a child, brought by the father, and that he was very much cut up. His name was Wynne—one of the Wynnes. It can’t be our Mr. Wynne, Laura; he is not married.”
“Oh, there are dozens of Wynnes,” replied her sister. “And you said it was a sad little funeral, did you not, Uncle Fred? Only the father and a friend and two country-people. The mother——”