"'Souls' are noted for something else than being saved for heaven nowadays, aren't they, Lady Beaulyon?" queried Lord Charlemont, with a knowing smile. Lady Beaulyon's small, rather hard mouth tightened into a thin line. "I really don't know!"--she said carelessly--"If you mean the social 'Souls,' they are rather unconventional certainly, and not always discreet. But they are generally interesting--much more so, I should think, than such 'Souls' as the parson preached about just now." "Indeed, yes!" agreed Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay--"I can imagine nothing more tiresome than to be a Soul without a Body, climbing from height to height of a heaven where there is no night, no sleep, no rest for ever and ever. Simply dreadful! But there!--one only goes to church for form's sake--just as an example to one's servants--and when it's done, don't you think it's best to forget it as soon as possible?" She raised her baby eyes appealingly as she put the question. Everybody laughed, or rather sniggered. Real honest laughter is not considered 'good form' by certain sections of society. A gentle imitation of the nanny-goat's bleat is the most seemly way for cultured persons to give vent to the expression of mirth. Maryllia alone was grave and preoccupied. The conversation of her guests annoyed her, though in London she had been quite well accustomed to hear people talk lightly and callously of religion and all religious subjects. Yet here, in the quiet country, things were different, somehow. God seemed nearer,--it was more difficult to blaspheme and ignore Him. And there was a greater sense of regret and humiliation in one's self for one's own lack of faith. Though, at the same time, it has to be reluctantly conceded that in no quarter of the world is religious hypocrisy and sham so openly manifested as in the English provinces, and especially in the small towns, where, notwithstanding the fact that all the Sundays are passed in persistent church and chapel going, the result of this strenuous sham piety is seen in the most unchristian back-biting and mischief-making on every week-day. But St. Rest was not a town. It was a tiny village apart,--utterly free from the petty pretensions of its nearest neighbour, Riversford, which considered itself almost 'metropolitan' on account of its modern red-brick and stucco villas into which its trades- people 'retired' as soon as they had made enough money to be able to pretend that they had never stood behind a counter in their lives. St. Rest, on the contrary, was simple in its tastes,--so simple as to be almost primitive, particularly in its religious sentiments, which the ministry of John Walden had, so far, kept faithful and pure. Its atmosphere was therefore utterly at variance with the cheap atheism of the modern world, and it was this discordancy which struck so sharply on Maryllia's emotional nature and gave her such a sense of unaccustomed pain.