"How should I know?" says Usk; "and Dolly says there was nothing between her and Gervase,--nothing; at least it was all in honor, as the French say." "Oh, of course," agrees Lady Waverley, with her plaintive eyes gazing dreamily down the aisle of larch-trees. The children have run on to Madame Sabaroff. "Where is Alan?" thinks Dolly Usk, angrily, on seeing Brandolin. Gervase, who is not an early riser, is then taking his coffee in bed as twelve strikes. He detests an English Sunday: although at Surrenden it is disguised as much as possible to look like any other day, still there is a Sunday feeling in the air, and Usk does not like people to play cards on Sundays: it is his way of being virtuous vicariously. "Primitive Christianity," says Brandolin, touching the white feathers of Dodo's hat and the white lace on her short skirts. "We only go to sleep," replies the child, disconsolately. "We might just as well go to sleep at home; and it is so hot in that pew, with all that red cloth!" "My love!" says Dulcia Waverley, scandalized. "Lady Waverley don't go to sleep!" cries the Babe, in his terribly clear little voice. "She was writing in her hymn-book and showing it to papa." No one appears to hear this indiscreet remark except Dodo, who laughs somewhat rudely. "I was trying to remember the hymn of Faber's 'Longing for God,'" says Lady Waverley, who is never known to be at a loss. "The last verse escapes me. Can any one recall it? It is so lamentable that sectarianism prevents those hymns from being used in Protestant churches." But no one there present is religious enough or poetic enough to help her to the missing lines. "There is so little religious feeling anywhere in England," she remarks, with a sigh. "It's the confounded levelling that destroys it," says Usk, echoing the sigh. "They speak of Faber," says Madame Sabaroff. "The most beautiful and touching of all his verses are those which express the universal sorrow of the world." And in her low, grave, melodious voice she repeats a few of the lines of the poem: "The sea, unmated creature, tired and lone, Makes on its desolate sands eternal moan. Lakes on the calmest days are ever throbbing Upon their pebbly shores with petulant sobbing. "The beasts of burden linger on their way Like slaves, who will not speak when they obey; Their eyes, whene'er their looks to us they raise, With something of reproachful patience gaze. "Labor itself is but a sorrowful song, The protest of the weak against the strong; Over rough waters, and in obstinate fields, And from dark mines, the same sad sound it yields." She is addressing Brandolin as she recites them; they are a little behind the others.