The evening that the committee was to meet at the rectory, Gilderman and his wife dined with the bishop and Mrs. Caiaphas. After the dinner Gilderman was to go up to the club. A reception was to be given to Secretary Titus, and he was one of the committee appointed to receive the guest of the club.
When Gilderman had married Dr. Caiaphas’s daughter it had provoked no small degree of talk in the particular social set to which he belonged. It was regarded as a distinct mésalliance upon his part, and his aunt, Mrs. de Monteserrat, had been so offended that she had refused to attend the wedding, and had not even yet fully taken him with his wife into her favor again.
Dr. Caiaphas maintained a very philosophical attitude concerning his daughter’s exalted marriage. “I believe Henry is a good, kind man,” he had been heard to declare, “or else I would not have trusted so precious a gift as my dear daughter into his keeping.”
Nevertheless, in his heart of hearts he was enormously elated at her great good-fortune; for a family alliance of an ecclesiastic of even so high a position as Dr. Caiaphas enjoyed, with a young Roman of such an exalted altitude as Gilderman, was a matter to bring great glory not only upon the young wife herself, but upon her entire family. It meant that the ægis of his power and wealth and influence was to be extended over all the other sons and daughters–it made possible opportunities of the highest advancement for the young men, and possible alliances of the same social magnitude for the girls.
Dr. Caiaphas was very paternal towards his son-in-law, and the young man was very filial towards his wife’s father. Nevertheless, when Gilderman came occasionally with his wife to the rectory–to dine, perhaps, with the family–it was as though he descended, bringing her with him, from an exalted altitude to a plane of a lower atmosphere.
He was very dutiful, very kind, very docile, but there was, nevertheless, a certain air of remoteness about him, and neither he nor they forgot that he was Henry Herbert Gilderman, the grandson of James Quincy Gilderman.
Upon this occasion Gilderman sat with the family in the library for a while after dinner.
Already the house was beginning to assume that cluttered appearance that foreshadows the actual time for moving.
“It is dreadful,” said Mrs. Gilderman, “to think of leaving the dear old home. I cannot remember any but this. Horace”–Horace was Mrs. Gilderman’s brother and the bishop’s eldest son–“Horace himself was only eight years old when papa and mamma moved here.”
“By-the-way,” said Gilderman, “when do you expect Horace?”