Mrs. Keith's eyes sank, and she spoke sullenly. "Of course you will do as you choose. 'My' wishes are of no importance." "Of very great importance; but one has sometimes to follow one's own judgment. Some day I hope you will see with me. Shall I show Phyllys the church this morning?" "No. She is coming with me." "Then I will go for a ride—" in unruffled calm; and he vanished. "A great pity! He will only make himself ill again," said Mrs. Keith. "I have such a dread of another breakdown. He is a dear fellow." She glanced quickly at Phyllys. "But I must have you appreciate Giles also." The girl smiled—a small subtle smile. She did not count that she was in danger of undervaluing Giles. Already she had told herself that she disapproved of Colin's manner to his mother during those three seconds. To anybody else it would not have mattered; but to his mother! She was sure that Giles would never so have contested in Colin's place. None the less, she liked Colin, and she could not see why Mrs. Keith should so persistently oppose his favourite occupation. CHAPTER XIII THE OLD VILLAGE CHURCH NEXT day, being Sunday, brought to light fresh aspects of the new world in which Phyllys was plunged. To her the change had come as a veritable plunge, involving such sensations of shock and breathlessness as a dip in the sea will produce. The novelty of it all gripped her imagination. After years of repression, of squeezing in a Procrustean bed, she found herself in an atmosphere of ease and refinement, in a house where beauty was valued, contrasting with the home where only abstract principle was exalted, and things lovely were eschewed as evil. Something of intoxication was the outcome. Her hour in the studio had awakened new thought, new feeling. The masterpieces shown by Colin had touched her more deeply than might be understood by one possessing no love of art. In Phyllys this love was inherited, and in childhood it had received careful cultivation. All the ten years at Midfell, though trained to outward submission, she had fought against the dictums which went in the teeth of her parents' teaching. To some extent she had been moulded by persistent pressure, had taken shape and colour, as a plant under training can be educated into new forms. But, like such a plant, she had a strong tendency to "revert" on the first chance; and here was her chance. The spell of present surroundings was great, and she "reverted" quickly to experiences of earlier days, never forgotten, though of late pushed out of her mind. Colin fascinated her. His personal beauty—a type of beauty due less to outline of feature, though that outline was fine, than to expression—and his "apartness" from common life were both so unlike aught she had ever come across that she could not dismiss him from her thoughts. And even though she had not quite approved of his manner to his mother, yet his serenity under that mother's resistance to his cherished aim won her admiration.