Hilary did not much mind what she looked at so long as Gabriel was her cicerone, and the lovers, dismounting at the gate, walked through the churchyard.
“What a strange tower it is standing quite separate from the church,” said Hilary. “Why was it built in that fashion?”
Gabriel glanced up at the solid brown old tower with its mantling ivy.
“No one precisely knows, but some say it was that it might be used as a place of refuge,” he replied.
They entered the south porch and found the door open and the fresh air blowing through the beautiful church; from the lovely little chantry chapel at the end of the south aisle came a flood of golden sunshine mellowing the white pillars, while the wonderful dark oak chancel screen, which was the special feature of the place, lifted its rare fan tracery and rich carving in sombre contrast. There was something in the quiet of this country church and in its beauty which appealed strongly to Hilary, while to Gabriel, also, though he was much less responsive to mere loveliness, the place had a homelike feeling, so often had he been there with his father, and so vividly had Dr. Harford described to him his own childish days at Bosbury.
The Harford monuments in the style of the early Renascence were on either side of the sacrarium, and Gabriel, with a smile, pointed out to Hilary a mistake in one of the inscriptions, which stated that there lay Richard Harford, of the parish of Bosbury, Armiger, and Martha his wife.
“This lady in Elizabethan dress who rests beside my great uncle, is, in truth, his first wife, Katherine Purefoy; and Mrs. Martha does not rest here at all, but had two more husbands—to wit, Michael Hopton, of Canon Frome, and John Berrow, of Awre.”
“I did not know you were connected with the Hoptons.”
“Yes, in this fashion, besides by a close friendship betwixt my father and Sir Richard Hopton, and that again is cemented by their political views being of the same order.”
“Have politics aught to do with friendship?”