This did not by any means look like the position in which they were now. Mr. Plowden went into the cottage almost with a little secrecy--looking round him before he opened the little garden gate--for the gossips in the parish were quite capable of reporting that there was something odd and unusual in the Rector’s constant visits to his sister, and that certainly something must be ‘up.’ To be sure it was only his second business visit--but even so much as that was unlike his usual habits, and he was extremely anxious that no question should be raised on the subject. He found her in the drawing-room, at her usual sewing. Mab was out, which was a thing of which the Rector was glad. She looked up hastily at the sight of him, reading his face, as women do with their eyes, before he had time to say a word. ‘You have not succeeded, James?’ ‘How do you know I have not succeeded?’ he asked crossly. ‘I have not, perhaps, done all that I hoped to do--but Rome was not built in a day. It was absurd to expect that I had only to go up to London--an hour in the train--and walk into old Gepps’ parsonage and find him still there.’ ‘You did not find him at all?’ ‘No, I didn’t find him at all. I never expected to find him, considering that he was an older man than my father, and that my father has been dead for sixteen years.’ ‘To be sure,’ said Lady William faintly. ‘I found his name, however, all right, and the place--not quite in the City, as I thought--St. Alban’s proprietary chapel, Marylebone.’ ‘Ah!’ ‘Do you remember the name?’ ‘No,’ said Lady William; ‘I’m afraid I don’t remember even the name.’ ‘Well, never mind; Gepps was incumbent then. And a very good place, too, for anything that was to be kept quiet--hidden away in a labyrinth of little streets; not so noticeable as the City, where an old church in the midst of warehouses is often something to see. Lady Somebody or other’s proprietary chapel; incumbent, the Rev. T. I. Gepps. No doubt that was the one.’ ‘Was it like my description? But, to be sure, it may have been changed, or restored, or something.’ ‘I can tell nothing about that. It has been changed with a vengeance. Emily, the chapel has been burned down----’ She gave a little scream of annoyance, but more because of the face he had put on, than from any perception in her own mind of the significance of the words. ‘A few of the things were saved--the books, I mean--but not all, not all, by any means: and all those between 1860 and 1870 perished.’ ‘What do you say, James?’ She began to awaken to a little consciousness that this concerned her, which she had not at first understood. ‘The books?’--she took it up but vaguely now--‘the books? What--what does that mean, James?’