His wife walked beside him a little longer. Then she left him and went into the house to see that all the last preparations for the guests were made; gathering on her way a bunch of early roses from a bed near the house. She walked slowly through the guestrooms on the garden front, looking at everything with a critical eye. The furniture of the rooms was shabby and plain. It had been scarcely changed at all since 1832, when Lord William's widowed mother had come to live at Hoddon Grey. But everything smelt of lavender and much cleaning. The windows were open to the June air, and the house seemed pervaded by the cooing of doves from the lime walk outside; a sound which did but emphasize the quiet of the house and garden. At the end of the garden front Lady William entered a room which had a newer and fresher appearance than the rest. The walls were white; a little rosebud chintz curtained the windows and the bed. White rugs made the hearth and the dressing-table gay, and there was a muslin bedspread lined with pink and tied with knots of pink ribbon. Lady William stood and looked at it with an intense and secret pleasure. She had been allowed to "do it up" the preceding summer, out of her own money, on which, in all her life, she had never signed a check; and she had given orders that Miss Coryston was to be put into it. Going to the dressing-table, she took from the vase there the formal three sprigs of azalea which the housemaid had arranged, and replaced them by the roses. Her small, wrinkled hands lingered upon them. She was putting them there for the girl Edward loved--who was probably to be his wife. A great tenderness filled her heart. When she left the room, she rapidly descended a staircase just beyond it, and found herself in the vestibule of the chapel. Pushing the chapel doors open, she made her way in. The rich glooms and scents of the beautiful still place closed upon her. Kneeling before the altar, still laden with Whitsun flowers, and under the large crucifix that hung above it, she prayed for her son, that he might worthily uphold the heritage of his father, that he might be happy in his wife, and blessed with children.... * * * * * An hour later the drawing-room and the lawns of Hoddon Grey were alive with tea and talk. Lady Coryston, superbly tall, in trailing black, was strolling with Lord William. Sir Wilfrid, the ex-Minister Sir Louis Ford, the Dean, and the Chaplain of the house were chatting and smoking round the deserted tea-table, while Lady William and the Oxford Professor poked among the flower-beds, exchanging confidences on phloxes and delphiniums. In the distance, under the lime avenue, now in its first pale leaf, two young figures paced to and fro. They were Newbury and Marcia. Sir Wilfrid had just thrown himself back in his chair, looking round him with a sigh of satisfaction. "Hoddon Grey makes me feel good! Not a common effect of country-houses!"