And accordingly there were severe Apostles in the painted windows--those slender lancet “lights” which at this moment dazzled the eyes of Agnes and Marian; and the new saints in the new little niches were, so far as austerity went, a great deal more correct and true to their “period” than even the old saints, without noses, and sorely worn with weather and irreverence, who were as genuine early English as the stout old walls. But Marian Atheling had no comprehension of this kind of severity. She shrunk away from the altar in its religious gloom--the altar with its tall candlesticks, and its cloth, which was stiff with embroidery--marvelling in her innocent imagination over some vague terror of punishments and penances in a church where “everything ought to be severe.” Marian took care to be on the other side of her father and mother, as they passed again the academic group discussing the newly restored sedilia, which was not quite true in point of “detail,” and drew a long breath of relief when she was safely outside these dangerous walls. “The Rector! that was the Rector. Oh Agnes!” cried Marian, as Papa announced the dreadful intelligence; and the younger sister, horror-stricken, and with great pity, looked sympathetically in Agnes’s face. Agnes herself was moved to look back at the tall central figure, using for a dais the elevation of that chancel. She smiled, but she was a little startled--and the girls went on to the village, and to glance through the trees at the great park surrounding the Hall, with not nearly so much conversation as at the beginning of their enterprise. But it was with a sigh instead of a laugh that Marian repeated, when they went home to dinner and Hannah’s magnificent pudding--“So, Agnes, we have seen them both.” CHAPTER XVII. THE CLERGY.