The week after the ball began with one of those dull Sundays which come down upon country life like an atmosphere of gloom, and seem to blot out all the pleasantness of creation. A drizzling Scotch-misty Sabbath, painfully suggestive of Glasgow and the Free Kirk. Madoline and Daphne walked to church, waterproofed to the eyes, and assisted sadly at a damp service; the whole congregation smelling of macintoshes; the drip drip from umbrellas on the encaustic pavement audible in the pauses of the Liturgy. It was a rule at South Hill that horses and coachmen should rest on the seventh day, save under direst pressure. Neither of the sisters objected to a wet walk. Edgar met them at church, having tramped over through mud and rain, much to the disgust of his mother, who deemed that to be absent from one’s parish church on a Sunday morning was a social misdemeanour not to be atoned for by the most fervent worship in a strange tabernacle. He joined Lina and her sister in the porch, and walked home with them by moist fields and a swollen Avon, whose fringe of willows never looked more funereal than on this dull wintry noontide, when the scant bare shoots stood straight up against a sky of level gray. ‘Any news from Goring?’ asked Edgar, by way of making himself agreeable. ‘Not since I saw you last. I fancy he must be very busy. He is usually such a good correspondent.’ ‘Busy!’ cried Edgar, laughing heartily at the idea. ‘What can he have to be busy about?—unless it’s the fit of a new suit of clothes, or some original idea in shooting-boots which he wants carried out, or the choice of a new horse; but, for that matter, I believe he doesn’t seriously care what he rides. Busy, indeed! He can’t know what work means. His bread was buttered for him on both sides, before he was born.’ ‘Isn’t that rather a juvenile notion of yours, Edgar?’ asked Madoline. ‘I believe the richest people are often the busiest. Property has its duties as well as its rights.’ ‘No doubt. But a rich man can always take the rights for his own share, and pay somebody else to perform the duties,’ answered Edgar shrewdly. ‘And I should think Goring was about the last man to let his property be a source of care to him.’ ‘In this instance I am afraid he is being worried about it,’ said Lina decisively; and with a look which seemed to say, ‘nobody has any right to have an opinion about my lover.’ The day was a long one, even with the assistance of Edgar in the task of getting through it. Daphne, considerably sobered by her engagement, behaved irreproachably all the afternoon and evening; but she stifled a good many yawns, until the effort made her eyes water.