Miss Barham was immediately interested in the details of the business which had just been occupying the others; and both touched and grieved by the account of the precarious state of the first projector of the alterations. She had a right, she said, to be interested in any improvements of a church, which had so long formed part of their family property, and she insisted on having it all detailed to her. Mr. Ufford accordingly went through the plans, while she listened with a most graceful and marked attention. Then she asked, in a pretty, injured tone, why her father had not been consulted; and was hardly appeased by the assurance that Mr. Barham having done so much for the chancel a few years ago, nothing more was required at present, nor could they feel justified in calling on him
for assistance in a matter of ornament which was purely the wish of Lord Dunsmore.
“Was nothing more really wanted?” inquired Isabel; she should like to see the church, and judge for herself. She asked Gwyneth to walk down to it with her; Mr. Ufford, of course, accompanied them. They sauntered about there for a long time. Isabel was very enthusiastic, suggesting all sorts of expensive plans for ornament and effect; Mr. Ufford himself was quite carried away by her zeal, entering into her ideas with almost equal warmth. It was a subject that exactly suited him; ideal, imaginative, combining beauty, poetry, and all the unreal, sentimental, religious feeling, in which his spirit always delighted. He could arrange a symbolical device, and revel in an illustration of some fanciful theory, much better than he could go through a dry detail, or endure a self-denying, sober perseverance against ill-success.
Isabel was mistress of the elements of her subject; she was acquainted with the fashionable theories and modern language of church architecture; she could discourse elegantly on stringcourse, and reredos, lecterns, open-sittings, equality of ranks, chants, and responses: galleries and parish clerks were her aversion, and a choral service her delight. Gwyneth could think and feel, but Isabel could talk; while the continued references to Mr. Ufford, to his taste, opinion, wish, decision, not only compelled him to listen, but were so very flattering to his own self-love, as to convince him that hitherto he had greatly undervalued Miss Barham’s good qualities.
They lingered long together, and when he had handed her into her carriage, and watched her drive off, he said a hasty farewell to the family at the Vicarage, and walked home, leaving the young ladies to put away his papers at their leisure.
Gwyneth was thoughtful and silent the rest of the day.
The curate came the next morning to the Vicarage soon after breakfast; but hardly had poor Gwyneth time to be glad to see him, when her joy was dissipated by his words.
“Oh, Mrs. Hepburn, will you give me those plans and
sketches for the new buildings? Mr. Barham wants to see them, and I am going over to the Abbey this morning to consult about them with him; and shall probably not come back till to-morrow.”
He went, and for some little time there was occasionally a change in his tone and manner toward Gwyneth Duncan; his words were often few, and hurried; there was no more loitering on the terrace, or dreaming over books of religious poetry with her. He did not absent himself from the Vicarage, but she was no longer always his object, even in the undecided and indolent way in which she had formerly been. His whole mind seemed engrossed in the decorations of the church, and things connected with it, including Miss Barham. Isabel promised a great deal toward providing funds; the chancel was, of course, her peculiar care: and deeply interested as she was, it was natural that she should be constantly driving over, to see how the work progressed. There was scarcely a day in which it was not necessary that the curate and the lady should meet; either at Hurstdene to consult on the spot, or in the library at the Abbey, to examine books on decorative art, or illuminations copied from old MSS.