“The English are awfully queer!” Waterville consoled himself with secretly exclaiming; to which wisdom, since his arrival among them, he had had recourse whenever he encountered a gap in the consistency of things. The church was even a rarer treasure than Sir Arthur’s description of it, and Waterville felt Mrs. Headway had been a fool not to come. He knew what she was after—she wished to study English life so that she might take possession of it; and to pass in among a hedge of bobbing rustics and sit among the monuments of the old Demesnes would have told her a great deal about English life. If she wished to fortify herself for the struggle she had better come to that old church. When he returned to Longlands—he had walked back across the meadows with the archdeacon’s lady, who was a vigorous pedestrian—it wanted half an hour of luncheon and he was unwilling to go indoors. He remembered he had not yet seen the gardens, and wandered away in search of them. They were on a scale that enabled him to find them without difficulty, and they looked as if they had been kept up unremittingly for a century or two. He hadn’t advanced very far between their blooming borders when he heard a voice that he recognised, and a moment after, at the turn of an alley, came upon Mrs. Headway, who was attended by the master of the scene. She was bareheaded beneath her parasol, which she flung back, stopping short as she beheld her compatriot. “Oh it’s Mr. Waterville come to spy me out as usual!” It was with this remark she greeted the slightly-embarrassed young man. “Hallo, you’ve come home from church?” Sir Arthur said, pulling out his watch. Waterville was struck with his coolness. He admired it; for, after all, he noted, it must have been disagreeable to him to be interrupted. He felt rather an ass, and wished he had kept hold of Mrs. April, to give him the air of having come for her sake. Mrs. Headway was looking adorably fresh in attire that Waterville, who had his ideas on such matters, felt sure wouldn’t be regarded as the proper thing for a Sunday morning in an English country-house: a négligé of white flounces and frills interspersed with yellow ribbons—a garment Madame de Pompadour might have sported to receive Louis XV., but probably wouldn’t have worn for a public airing. The sight of this costume gave the finishing touch to his impression that she knew on the whole what she was about. She would take a line of her own; she wouldn’t be too accommodating. She wouldn’t come down to breakfast; she wouldn’t go to church; she would wear on Sunday mornings little elaborately informal dresses and look dreadfully un-British and un-Protestant. Perhaps after all this was best. She began to talk with a certain volubility.