‘Yes, we drive to church and back. Mother says it goes against her to have the horse out on the Sabbath, but the distance is more than she could manage.’
The morning service began at half-past ten, so at half-past nine the dog-cart was at the door, for there was a good deal of walking up and down hill to be allowed for, driving in this part of the country being not altogether a lazy business. The two young men, who occupied the back seat, were continually getting up and down, and had walked about half the distance by the time they came to the quiet old church whose single bell clanged over the green hill-side.
‘I’m blest if the Squire and Mrs. Penwyn haven’t come back!’ cried Martin, descrying a handsome landau and pair in front of them as they drew near the church.
‘Are you sure that’s the Penwyn carriage? They were not expected three days ago,’ said Maurice.
‘Quite sure. We’ve no other gentry hereabouts, except the Morgrave Park people, and they hardly ever are at home. There is no doubt about it. That is Mr. Penwyn’s carriage.’
‘Then I’ll renew my acquaintance with him after church,’ said Maurice.
The old grey church, which he had explored two days ago, had quite a gay look in its Sunday guise. The farmers’ wives and daughters in their fine bonnets—the villagers, with their sunburnt faces and Sabbath cleanliness—the servants from the Manor, occupying two pews under the low gallery, within which dusky recess the livery of Churchill Penwyn’s serving-men gleamed gaily, while the bonnets of the maids, all more or less in the last Parisian fashion, made the shadowy corner a perfect flower-bed. And most important of all, in a large square pew in the chancel appeared the Manor House family—Churchill, gentlemanlike and inscrutable, with his pale, thoughtful face, and grave grey eyes—Madge, looking verily the young queen of that western land—and Viola, fair and flower-like, a beauty to be worshipped so much the more for that frail loveliness which had a fatal air of evanescence.
‘I’m afraid she won’t live long,’ whispered Martin to his companion, in one of the pauses of the service, while the purblind old clerk was hunting for the antiquated psalm, Tate and Brady, which it was his duty to give out.
‘Not Mrs. Penwyn? Why, she looks the picture of health,’ replied Maurice, in a similar undertone.
Martin coloured like a schoolboy justly suspected of felonious views in relation to apples.