All this, however, was as nothing to the judgment which Mr. Brownlow brought upon himself on the following Sunday. The fact that his father had doubled any clerk’s salary was a matter of great indifference to Jack. He smiled in an uncomfortable sort of way when he heard it was young Powys on whom this benefit had fallen; but otherwise it did not affect him. On Sunday, however, as it happened, something occurred that brought Mr. Brownlow’s favoritism--his extraordinary forgetfulness of his position and of what was due to his children--home in the most striking way to his son. It was a thing that required all Mr. Brownlow’s courage; and it can not be said that he was quite comfortable about it. He had done what never had been done before to any clerk since the days of Brownlows began. He had invited young Powys to dinner. He had even done more than that--he had invited him to come early, to ramble about the park, as if he had been an intimate. It was not unpleasant to him to give the invitation, but there is no doubt that the thought of how he was to communicate the fact to his children, and prepare them for their visitor, did give him a little trouble. Of course it was his own house. He was free to ask any one he liked to it. The choice lay entirely with himself; but yet--He said nothing about it until the very day for which his invitation had been given--not that he had forgotten the fact, but somehow a certain constraint came over him whenever he so much as approached the subject. It was only Thursday when he asked young Powys to come, and he had it on his mind all that evening, all Friday and Saturday, and did not venture to make a clean breast of it. Even when Jack was out of the way, it seemed to the father impossible to look into Sara’s face, and tell her of the coming guest. Sunday was very bright--a midsummer day in all its green and flowery glory. Jack had come to the age when a young man is often a little uncertain about his religious duties. He did not care to go and hear Mr. Hardcastle preach. So he said; though the Rector, good man, was very merciful, and inflicted only fifteen minutes of sermon; and then he was very unhappy, and restless, and uneasy about his own concerns; and he was misanthropical for the moment, and disliked the sight and presence of his fellow-creatures. So Jack did not go to church. And Sara and her father did, walking across the beautiful summer park, under the shady trees, through the paths all flecked with sunshine. Sara’s white figure gave a centre to the landscape. She was not angelic, notwithstanding her white robes, but she was royal in her way--a young princess moving through a realm that belonged to her, used to homage, used to admiration, used to know herself the first. Though she was as sweet and as gracious as the morning, all this was written in her face; for she was still very young, and had not reached the maturer dignity of unconsciousness. Mr.