There was no denying that the Rector had aged during the past year, but to-night he was quite rejuvenated.
"I am really not without hopes of having Horatia home for Christmas," he announced, as they sat down to dinner. "Of course you know, Mr. Dormer, that I lost my son-in-law last June under very tragic circumstances. He took part in the rising organised by that misguided woman the Duchesse de Berry, and was shot, poor boy, by the soldiers of the Government. A dreadful business; he died in my daughter's arms. The shock completely prostrated her, as you may imagine; she was ill for some time, then there were endless legal formalities, and it is only now that she talks of being able to come over and pay me a long visit at Christmas."
"Does she not intend to make her home in England?" asked Dormer.
"She wishes to, naturally," replied Mr. Grenville, "and by French law she can do as she likes, but whether poor Armand's relatives will bring pressure to bear to keep her in France I don't know. I try not to meet trouble half-way. At any rate she will be here for Christmas. There will be a child in the house again; Christmas seems to demand that. And to think that you have both seen my grandson since I have!"
Neither of the young men waxed communicative on the subject of the infant; Dormer, indeed, had suddenly become rather thoughtful.
"Tristram, you will have to come over here at Christmas-time," went on the Rector. "We must hang up a stocking for Maurice. They don't keep Christmas in France, I understand."
Tristram murmured something about being busy at Christmas, and that he would be taking his priest's orders just before that festival.
"Oh, I daresay you'll be able to manage it," said the Rector easily. "A few days in the country now and then would set you up, living as you do in that plague-spot. By the way, I hear you exposed yourself very unnecessarily in the cholera there—most laudable of course, but you young men are so rash. It's just the same with this foolish and shocking idea of throwing over the supremacy of the State which you have got into your heads. Church and State, to any right-thinking mind, are as inseparable as body and soul, and it will be a black day for England if they are ever torn apart. How you, Mr. Dormer, with your ultra-Tory ancestry ... but there, I suppose it is just because they were Non-jurors that the idea is not as repugnant to you as it ought to be."
"Dormer's not a Tory, Rector," remarked Tristram. "He's a Radical, like me, now."
"Oh, indeed," returned Mr. Grenville, not much perturbed. "Well, I won't upset your convictions; but, Tories or Radicals, I don't fancy you will welcome this new Parliament of ours when we get it."