They walked on till they reached the old black pew attached to the castle--a vast square enclosure of oak panelling occupying half the aisle, and surmounted with a little balustrade above the framework. Within, the baize lining that had once been green, now faded to the colour of a common in August, was torn, kicked and scraped to rags by the feet and hands of the ploughboys who had appropriated the pew as their own special place of worship since it had ceased to be used by any resident at the castle, because its height afforded convenient shelter for playing at marbles and pricking with pins. Charlotte and Mrs. Goodman had by this time left the building, and could be seen looking at the headstones outside. ‘If you were a De Stancy,’ said Somerset, who had pondered more deeply upon that new wish of hers than he had seemed to do, ‘you would be a churchwoman, and sit here.’ ‘And I should have the pew done up,’ she said readily, as she rested her pretty chin on the top rail and looked at the interior, her cheeks pressed into deep dimples. Her quick reply told him that the idea was no new one with her, and he thought of poor Mr. Woodwell’s shrewd prophecy as he perceived that her days as a separatist were numbered. ‘Well, why can’t you have it done up, and sit here?’ he said warily. Paula shook her head. ‘You are not at enmity with Anglicanism, I am sure?’ ‘I want not to be. I want to be--what--’ ‘What the De Stancys were, and are,’ he said insidiously; and her silenced bearing told him that he had hit the nail. It was a strange idea to get possession of such a nature as hers, and for a minute he felt himself on the side of the minister. So strong was Somerset’s feeling of wishing her to show the quality of fidelity to paternal dogma and party, that he could not help adding-- ‘But have you forgotten that other nobility--the nobility of talent and enterprise?’ ‘No. But I wish I had a well-known line of ancestors.’ ‘You have. Archimedes, Newcomen, Watt, Telford, Stephenson, those are your father’s direct ancestors. Have you forgotten them? Have you forgotten your father, and the railways he made over half Europe, and his great energy and skill, and all connected with him as if he had never lived?’ She did not answer for some time. ‘No, I have not forgotten it,’ she said, still looking into the pew. ‘But, I have a predilection d’artiste for ancestors of the other sort, like the De Stancys.’ Her hand was resting on the low pew next the high one of the De Stancys. Somerset looked at the hand, or rather at the glove which covered it, then at her averted cheek, then beyond it into the pew, then at her hand again, until by an indescribable consciousness that he was not going too far he laid his own upon it. ‘No, no,’ said Paula quickly, withdrawing her hand. But there was nothing resentful or haughty in her tone--nothing, in short, which makes a man in such circumstances feel that he has done a particularly foolish action.