The Gerard pew in Felton church is as large as a moderate-sized room, and is furnished with arm-chairs and a fire-place. In winter, Sir Thomas spends fully half the service time in poking the fire noisily and raking out the ashes. There is no fire now, and he misses it. A high red curtain runs round the sacred enclosure, and through it the farmers' wives and daughters strain their eyes to catch a glimpse of Miladi's marabout feathers, and Miss Blessington's big, golden chignon, and little green aerophane bonnet. St. John generally pulls the brass rings of his bit of curtain aside along the brass rods, to make a peep-hole for himself over the congregation. The shape and size of the pew do away with the necessity for any wearisome conformity of attitude among the inmates. During the prayers, Sir Thomas stands bolt upright, with one bent knee resting on his chair; his bristling grey head, shaggy brows, and fierce spectacles looming above the red curtain, to the admiration and terror of the row of little charity girls beneath. Constance kneels forward on a hassock, with a large, ivory prayer book, gold-crossed, red-edged, in one hand, and a turquoise and gold-topped double scent-bottle and cobweb cambric handkerchief in the other. She confesses in confidence to her pale lavender gloves that she has done that which she ought not to have done, and has left undone that which she ought to have done; making graceful little salaams and undulations of head and body every two minutes. Miladi confesses that she has gone to sleep. St. John makes no pretence of kneeling at all: he leans, elbow on knee and head on hand, and looks broken-hearted, as men have a way of doing in church.
In the afternoon, no one at Felton thinks of attending Divine service. It is a fiat of Sir Thomas's that no carriage, horses, or servants are to be taken out more than once a day, and the two miles' walk is an insuperable impediment to Lady Gerard, and hardly less so to Constance.
After luncheon the three ladies are sitting in the garden, with the prospect of four unbroken hours of each other's companionship before them. Masses of calceolarias, geraniums, lobelias, are flaring and flaunting around them—masses in which the perverted eye of modern horticulture sees its ideal of beauty. Nature, in her gardening, never plants great, gaudy squares and ovals and rounds of red and blue and yellow, without many shades of tenderest grey and green to soften and relieve them. Across the grass St. John comes lounging; his Sunday frock coat sitting creaseless to his spare, sinewy figure. Esther hates the sight of that coat: it reminds her so painfully, by its very unlikeness, of the singular garment that forms the head and crown of her betrothed's scant wardrobe.
"Do you know, I have half a mind to go to Radley church this afternoon. Will any one come with me?—will you, Conny?" turning, mindful of last night, with a conciliatory smile to Miss Blessington.
"How far is it?" she asks, indolently, divided between her hatred of walking and her desire to frustrate the tête-à-tête she sees impending between St. John and Esther.
"Three or four miles; four, I suppose."
She lifts her large blue eyes languidly, "Four miles there, and four miles back! Are you mad, St. John? What do you suppose one is made of?"
"Will you take pity on me then, Miss Craven?" turning eagerly to Esther.
She tilts her hat low down over her little, straight, Greek nose, looks up at him with shy coquetry under the brim, but answers not.
"A man who delights in solitude must be either a wild beast or a god, don't you know? I have no pretence to be either: I hate my own society cordially. Come" (with a persuasive ring in his pleasant voice); "you had much better."