Eustace, I thought, turned pale, but it might have been the greenish light through the bottle-glass windows of the little church, on whose damp floor we three were standing before the tombs of the Brandlings of former times, quaint pyramids of kneeling figures, sons and daughters tapering downwards from the kneeling father and mother; and recumbent knights, obliterated by centuries in the ruined roofless chapel, so that the dog at their feet, the sword by their side, let alone their poor washed features, were scarce distinguishable.... "They look like drowned people," I said, and indeed the green light through the trees and the bottle glass, and the greenish damp stains all round, made the church seem like a sea cave, with the sea moaning round it. "Where have you seen drowned people, Penelope?" asked Eustace, and I felt a little reproved for the horridness of my imaginings. "Nowhere," I hastily answered; "just a fancy that passed through my head. And you said there are so many wrecks on this coast, you know." "We are all wrecks on the ocean of Time," remarked the Reverend Hubert, "overwhelmed by its flood." "You are the bishop now," I laughed, "not the pilchard fisher," and we went through the damp churchyard of huddled grassy mounds and crooked gravestones under the big trees of the glen. "Eustace," I said that evening, "I wish I might not be buried down there," and then, considering that all his ancestors were, I felt sorry. But he clasped my arm very tenderly, and exclaimed with a look of deep pain, "For God's sake do not speak of such things, my love. Even in jest the words make me feel faint and sick." Poor Eustace! I fear he is not well; and that what he has found at St. Salvat's is eating into his spirits. _November_ 15, 1772. I have been feeling doubtful, for some days past, whether to send my diary regularly to my mother, lest she should be distressed (at that great distance) by my account of this place and our life here. Yet I felt as if something had suddenly happened, a window suddenly closed or a door slammed in my face, when Eustace begged me to-day to be very reserved in anything I wrote in my letters. "These country postmasters," he said, not without hesitation, "are not to be trusted with any secrets; they are known to amuse their leisure and entertain their gossips with the letters which pass through their hands." He laughed, but not very naturally. "Some day," he said, "I will be sending a special messenger to Cardiff, and then your diary--for I know that you are keeping one--shall go to your mother. But for the present I would not say more than needful about ... about our surroundings, my dear Penelope." I felt childishly vexed. "'Tis that hateful Uncle Hubert;" I cried, "that reads our letters, Eustace! I feel sure of it!" "Nonsense," answered Eustace. "I tell you that it is a well-known habit among postmasters and postmistresses in this country," and he went away a little displeased, as I thought.