He officiated in Stephen’s absence. He did it in a clear tenor. The room growled with muffled responses. Virginia’s voice firmly led the growls. They all knelt with their faces to the walls and the soles of their shoes towards Mr. Lambton. Catherine became very conscious of her shoes, aware that their high heels were not the heels of the absolutely pure in heart. Before her mind floated a picture she had once seen of a pair of German boots that had belonged to a German woman who had been wicked, but, by the time she wore the boots, was good. They were the very opposite of the shoes she herself had on at the moment, and below the picture of them was written: O wie lieblich sind die Schuhe Demuthsvolle Seelensruhe.... She wondered what Mr. Lambton would think of them as outward signs of inward grace, and, if he thought highly, what would he think of hers? Ashamed, she collected her wandering thoughts; for the words Mr. Lambton was repeating were so beautiful that they sanctified everything--himself, herself, the assembled upturned shoe-soles. She suddenly felt very small and silly, as though she were one of the commoner insects, hopping irreverently at the feet of some great calm angel. She laid her cheek on her folded arms and listened attentively to the lovely words Mr. Lambton was praying--<i>Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee</i>.... How often she had heard them; how seldom she had noticed them. They were more beautiful than music; they were nobler.... Virginia saw--it was her business to see how the servants behaved, and her glance naturally took in Catherine too--her mother’s attitude, and hoped that Mr. Lambton didn’t. The only decent way of praying in a drawing-room was to kneel up straight, hands folded and eyes either shut or looking at the seat of one’s chair. Her mother was crouching, almost sitting, on the floor, her arms resting on her chair, her head laid sideways on her arms. Mothers oughtn’t to do that. A child who was very tired might, but it would certainly be reproved afterwards. Fortunately the servants couldn’t see because of their backs, but Mr. Lambton, if he raised his eyes, wouldn’t be able not to. She hoped he wouldn’t raise his eyes. How very keenly one felt everything one’s mother did or didn’t do. Strange how sensitive one became about her when one was grown up, and how, in some uncomfortable way, responsible. Prayers were over in ten minutes, the servants filed out, Mr. Lambton, having drunk some soda water and said what was proper about his evening, went away, and Virginia, reluctant to go upstairs to her frigid solitude, came and stood by the fire warming her hands so as to put off the melancholy moment a little longer, and talked of Stephen. ‘I do so miss him these week-ends,’ she said, strangling a sigh. Catherine sympathetically stroked her arm. ‘I can so well understand how much one would miss some one one loved as you love Stephen,’ she said.