The Duke crushed the letter back into his pocket, and came to a resolution. "I’ll run up to town to-morrow and call on the Shermans," he said to himself. "And now I’ll do the proper thing, and go to church. I’m not going to crouch in corners because of that patriarchal old fiend at the Cecil." The church at which generations of Hanburys had worshiped was in the center of Tarrant village, a mile from the lodge gates, but there was a short cut to it across the park. This was the route taken by the Duke, who first crossed the greensward and then passed out by a private wicket into the road after traversing the belt of copse that fringed the demesne. The villagers, who had waited for his coming, standing bare-headed in the churchyard, were a little disappointed that he had not driven up in full state. But the solitary gentleman limping up the path atoned for the lack of ceremony and won their hearts by his friendly smile; and a handshake to one or two of the older inhabitants, whom he remembered as a boy, clinched the matter. The verdict went round that the new Duke would "do." The service that morning was, it is to be feared, more ducal than devotional. From the white-robed choir, ranged among the tombs of dead-and-gone Hanburys in the chancel, to the hard-breathing rustics on the back benches every eye was turned and steadily kept on the lonely figure in the family pew. While grateful for the homage paid him, the Duke was not sorry when the ordeal was over and he was free to make his way homeward. But he was not to get off so easily. As he was about to let himself through the private gate into the park, intending to go back, as he had come, through the copse, footsteps sounded behind him, and Mr. Bristow, the vicar, overtook him. They had already met on the previous day. "Your Grace is alone still?" panted the clergyman. "Ah, I thought your secretary wouldn’t find it so easy to cast his shackles. I am commissioned by Mrs. Bristow to say—I hope you won’t think us presuming—that we shall be delighted if you will give us your company at our homely lunch." A sudden impulse prompted Beaumanoir to accept the invitation. He had taken a liking for the hale, vigorous old vicar, who had the archives of his family by rote, and an hour or two in his society would take him out of himself. So he turned back and accompanied his host to the vicarage, where he made a good impression on Mrs. Bristow by his cordial praise of her training of the choir and by appreciation of her strawberries and cream. It was past four when he returned to Prior’s Tarrant, to be met in the entrance-hall by the butler with a face eloquent of "something wrong." "What is it, Manson?" he asked. "Mr. Bristow sent a boy, did he not, to say that I was lunching at the vicarage?"