"Well, you must be Venus to me," returned Everest, smiling down upon her; his face had a gentle, tender expression, the tones of his voice were very soft, and the girl's heart beat to suffocation as she heard them.
She could not answer. Just then the door opened and the Rector, with the entire family group behind him, appeared in the doorway. Everest and Regina moved a little apart, their hands, which had remained in each other's, fell to their sides. Everest moved forward to greet his host.
"Glad to see you are an early riser," remarked the Rector genially. "Did you sleep well?"
"No, I can't say I did, there are so many disturbing influences in the country: nightingales and church clocks and all sorts of things; then when I did go to sleep I dreamt, which I never do in town."
"What did you dream about?" asked Jane Marlow. She looked very pretty this morning in a fresh white cambric, with a green ribbon round her slim throat.
"Of silver images," replied Everest, and his eyes went to Regina, who stood by her place at the table. She looked down as she heard these words; a tremor went through her whole frame.
"How funny dreams are, they never seem to correspond to anything one has seen or done in the day, do they?" replied Jane, and Everest answered calmly, "Hardly ever."
The coffee was brought in and they all closed round the table while the Rector began to say grace.
Breakfast was generally a most unpleasant meal at the Rectory. From the last word of the long grace at the beginning, to the first word of the long grace at the end, it was a series of surly, grumbling wrangles, in which everyone showed their early-morning ill-humour to the utmost. Mrs. Marlow, according to the Rector, had always done something wrong: either she was late, or she had had the coffee made too weak, or too strong, or the housemaid had not called him early enough, or too early, or his bath was cold. Mrs. Marlow generally argued out the respective points, until she was clearly proved in the right, or at least her husband was reduced to an exhausted silence. Then the two sisters had various complaints to make, or else the continuation of some personal quarrel begun upstairs absorbed them.