It was a golden hour. Yet when Marcia went to take off her hat before luncheon, and stood absently before the glass in a flush of happiness, it was as though suddenly a door opened behind her, and two sad and ghostly figures entered the room of life, pricking her with sharp remorse for having forgotten them.
And when she rejoined Newbury down-stairs, it seemed to her, from his silent and subdued manner, that something of the same kind had happened also to him.
"You haven't tackled Coryston yet?" said Sir Wilfrid, as he and Newbury walked back toward Hoddon Grey in the late afternoon, leaving Marcia and Lady Coryston in the clutches of a dressmaker, who had filled the drawing-room with a gleaming show of "English silks," that being Lady Coryston's special and peremptory command for the trousseau.
"No. He hasn't even vouchsafed me a letter."
Newbury laughed; but Sir Wilfrid perceived the hurt feeling which mingled with the laugh.
"Absurd fellow!" said Sir Wilfrid. "His proceedings here amuse me a good deal—but they naturally annoy his mother. You have heard of the business with the Baptists?"
Newbury had seen some account of it in the local paper.
"Well now they've got their land—through Coryston. There always was a square piece in the very middle of the village—an enclave belonging to an old maid, the daughter of a man who was a former butler of the Corystons, generations ago. She had migrated to Edinburgh, but Coryston has found her, got at her, and made her sell it—finding, I believe, the greater part of the money. It won't be long before he'll be laying the foundation-stone of the new Bethel—under his mother's nose."
"A truly kind and filial thing to do!" said the young High Churchman, flushing.