Her husband and her sons requested her prayers when they went on any expedition of danger, as their ancestors must have sought for the intercessions of priest or canonized saint. The heavier oaths, except under strong provocation, were dropped (by instinct rather than by intention) in her presence; and mild adjurations, as by heathen gods or goddesses, or by a lover's troth, or by a cavalier's honor, substituted for them. They would listen fondly as she sang "divine poems" to her lute, and declare she had the sweetest warbling voice and the prettiest hands in His Majesty's three kingdoms. But it never seemed to occur to them that her piety was any condemnation, or any rule to them. Indeed, she had so many minute laws and ceremonies that, easily as they suited her, it would have been difficult to fit them into any but a lady's life of leisure. She had special prayers and hymns for nine o'clock, mid day, three o'clock, six o'clock. And once awakening in the night I heard sounds like those of her lute stealing from the window of the little oratory next her chamber. She had what seemed to me countless distinctions of days and seasons, marked by the things she ate or did not eat, which she observed as strictly as Aunt Dorothy her prohibitions as to not wearing things. Only in one thing Lady Lucy was happier than Aunt Dorothy; for whilst Aunt Dorothy fondly wished for a book of Leviticus in the New Testament, and could not find it, Lady Lucy had her book of Leviticus,--not indeed exactly in the New Testament, but solemnly sanctioned by the authority of Archbishop Laud. A complex framework to adapt to the endless varieties and inexorable necessities of any man's life, rich or poor, in court, or camp, or city; or indeed of any woman's, unless provided with waiting gentlewomen. In fact, the Lady Lucy herself sometimes spoke with wistful looks and sighs of Mr. Farrar's Sacred College at Little Gidding (not far from us), between Huntingdon and Cambridge, where the voice of prayer never ceased day nor night, and the psalter was chanted through in a rotatory manner by successive worshippers once in every four-and-twenty hours. Sir Walter and her sons never attempted to imitate her. She floated in their imagination, in a land of clouds, between earth and heaven. Her religion had a dainty sweetness and solemn grace about it most becoming, they considered, to a noble lady; but for men, except for a few clergymen, as inapplicable as Archbishop Laud's priestly vestments for the street or the battle-field.