George said nothing, but she went on eagerly. It never occurred to her that he could be bored by her impressions in these greatest days of her life. "To see a half-dozen well-groomed young men settle the affairs of India and Australia in a short, indifferent colloquy! How shy and awkward they were, too! They actually stuttered out their sentences in their fear of posing or seeming pretentious. So English! Don't you think it was very English, George?"
"I really did not think about it at all. I have had very different things to occupy me," said George, coldly superior to all mothers and Parliaments. "This is the church."
The cab stopped before an iron door between two shops in the most thronged part of Bishopsgate Street. He pushed it open, and they passed suddenly out of the hurrying crowd into the solemn silence of an ancient dingy building. A dim light fell through a noble window of the thirteenth century upon cheap wooden pews. The church was empty, and had that curious significance and half-spoken message of its own which belongs to a vacant house.
"I remember," whispered Frances, awestruck. "This was built by the first Christian convert, St. Ethelburga."
"You believe every thing, mother!" said George irritably. She wandered about, looking at the sombre walls and inscriptions, and then back uneasily, to his moody face.
Suddenly she came up to him as he stood leaning against a pillar. "Something has happened!" she said. "You did not bring me here to look at the church. You have something to tell me."
The young man looked at her and turned away. "Yes, I have. It isn't a death," he said, with a nervous laugh. "You need not look in that way. It is—something very different. I—I was married in this church yesterday to Lisa Arpent."
Frances did not at first comprehend the great disaster that bulked black across her whole life, but, woman-like, grasped at a fragment of it.
"You were married and I was not there! Yesterday! My boy was married and he forgot me!"
"Mother! Don't look like that! Here, sit down," grabbing her helplessly by the arms. "I didn't want to hurt you. I brought you here to tell you quietly. Cry! Why don't you cry if you're worried! Oh! I believe she's dying!" he shouted, staring around the empty church.