Sir Cheveley Drummond, looking a little conscious, came in at this moment.
“How energetic everybody is this morning,” said Lady Gascoyne.
Mr. Puttock, who appeared on the scene almost as she spoke, looked anything but energetic. He looked as effete as only a decadent young American can look. Lady Enid, who followed, managed to convey with great art the impression that she had just left her room. Lady Briardale did not appear, but Lady Branksome, unable to trust Lady Enid, arrived in good time, although she confided to me later that she thought breakfasting in public a barbarous practice.
After breakfast, the whole party, with the exception of Sir Cheveley Drummond, went to church. Poor Sir Cheveley hardly saw the point of going when he knew perfectly well that he would not be permitted to share Lady Enid’s hymn-book.
I distinctly heard Lady Briardale say, as we were all waiting in the hall:
“I should have thought, my dear, that he would have preferred a synagogue.”
At church a thrill passed through me when I found that I was seated next to Esther Lane. It was an infinite pleasure to me to be sitting beside her through the long and stupid sermon. The yellow winter sunlight fell across the recumbent effigies of dead and gone Gascoynes, and made the painted window to the east a blaze of colour.
Her presence and the surroundings filled me with a sense of purity and peace, and I surrendered myself to the primitive emotions. I suppose a less subtle soul would have been oppressed with a sense of past sins, and would in such a building have been filled with despair at the consciousness of irrevocable guilt. I fortunately had schooled myself to control. The sensation of goodness can, like other things, be acquired. When I had obtained the prize for which I was striving I had not the least doubt that I should find it easy to put away from me any unworthy feeling of regret. Why should I not? The harm was after all very questionable. It was not as if, so far, I had made widows and orphans. The amount of suffering I had inflicted was limited, and at any rate I should not leave poverty, the greatest of all ills, in my track. Indeed, under the influence of that Sunday morning service I felt quite regenerated. When we left the church Esther Lane and her pupil went through the great gates of the castle into the woods beyond, and I would have given worlds to follow her, but Lady Branksome told me that she agreed with her son, and that I was decidedly amusing. She insisted on my going for a walk with her. At the same time she took good care to see that Mr. Puttock and Lady Enid were close behind.
In the afternoon I manœuvred a meeting with Esther Lane. I surmised that she and her pupil would walk away from the castle, and so I kept watch on the drawbridge. Everybody was more or less occupied. I was aware that Lady Branksome had, before retiring for her afternoon nap, left Mr. Puttock in possession of Lady Enid, who had got rid of him with all the ease imaginable, and was now walking with Sir Cheveley on the battlements.
Lord Gascoyne had pleaded letters, and I had arranged to fetch him in an hour or so and go for a tramp.