He pressed her hand, but he turned his face a little away, conscious at the same moment of a flush of self-reproach and of a lurking smile. "Don't!" he said. "I'm not ill. I'm all right now--never better. Isn't it time for me to be off? I say, my dear girl, if you don't look sharp you'll be late at St. Andrew's." "St. Andrew's!" she repeated scornfully. "_I_ go to St. Andrew's _now_, and think all the service through that my bad boy may be fainting at St. Sylvester's! No, no: I shall go with you." "Thank you," said Bertie, sitting up and running his fingers through his hair by way of preparation for church. "I shall be glad, if you don't mind." "That is," she went on, "if you are fit to go at all." "Oh yes. I couldn't leave old Clifton in the lurch for anything short of sudden death, and even then he'd feel himself ill used. Stay at home because I felt faint? It would be as much as my place is worth," said Bertie with a smile of which Judith could not understand the fine irony. "I'll go and get ready," she said. But she went to the door of Percival's sitting-room and knocked. "Come in," he answered, and she opened it. He was stooping over his fire, poker in hand. She paused on the threshold, and, after breaking a hard lump of coal, he looked over his shoulder: "Miss Lisle! I beg your pardon. I thought they had come for the breakfast things." "Oh!" she said, in a slightly disappointed tone. "You are not going to church to-day." For Thorne was more picturesquely careless in his apparel than is the wont of the British church-goer. A rapid change of mind enabled him to answer truthfully, "Yes, I am. I ought to get ready, I suppose. Did you want me for anything, Miss Lisle?" "Were you going to St. Sylvester's, or not?" Percival had known by her tone that she wanted him to go to church. But he did not know which church claimed his attendance, so he answered cautiously, "Oh, I hardly know. I think I should like some one to make up my mind for me. Are you going with your brother?" "Yes," said Judith. "He isn't very well to-day. I was rather frightened by his fainting just now." "Of course I'll go with you," said Percival. "I'll be ready in two minutes. Been fainting? Is he better now?" "Much better. Will you really?" And Judith vanished.