church and then had decided they were too good for that and had stayed at home. She told a story of some length about the shabby way Lady Jane had treated the Duchess, as well as an anecdote in relation to a purchase she had made in Paris—on her way back from Cannes; made for Lady Egbert, who had never refunded the money. Paul Overt suspected her of a tendency to figure great people as larger than life, until he noticed the manner in which she handled Lady Egbert, which was so sharply mutinous that it reassured him. He felt he should have understood her better if he might have met her eye; but she scarcely so much as glanced at him. “Ah here they come—all the good ones!” she said at last; and Paul Overt admired at his distance the return of the church-goers—several persons, in couples and threes, advancing in a flicker of sun and shade at the end of a large green vista formed by the level grass and the overarching boughs. “If you mean to imply that _we’re_ bad, I protest,” said one of the gentlemen—“after making one’s self agreeable all the morning!” “Ah if they’ve found you agreeable—!” Mrs. St. George gaily cried. “But if we’re good the others are better.” “They must be angels then,” said the amused General. “Your husband was an angel, the way he went off at your bidding,” the gentleman who had first spoken declared to Mrs. St. George. “At my bidding?” “Didn’t you make him go to church?” “I never made him do anything in my life but once—when I made him burn up a bad book. That’s all!” At her “That’s all!” our young friend broke into an irrepressible laugh; it lasted only a second, but it drew her eyes to him. His own met them, though not long enough to help him to understand her; unless it were a step towards this that he saw on the instant how the burnt book—the way she alluded to it!—would have been one of her husband’s finest things. “A bad book?” her interlocutor repeated. “I didn’t like it. He went to church because your daughter went,” she continued to General Fancourt. “I think it my duty to call your attention to his extraordinary demonstrations to your daughter.” “Well, if you don’t mind them I don’t,” the General laughed. “Il s’attache à ses pas. But I don’t wonder—she’s so charming.” “I hope she won’t make him burn any books!” Paul Overt ventured to exclaim. “If she’d make him write a few it would be more to the purpose,” said Mrs. St. George. “He has been of a laziness of late—!”