Marion did not know how to act in such an emergency, but it was understood that the invitation was accepted. And Miss Eliza returned after half-an-hour’s talking, full of the genius of the mistress of the house, and the wealth of its fitting up. “There would need to be something very sustaining in the sense of good old blood in your veins, and a family that has existed for generations,” she said, “for if I was Lady Jean, I could not bear to see how the house is changed, just by the railway man. For it was always a bare, cauldrife sort of house. I used to feel that there were not carpets enough on the floor, nor coals enough in the grate. Now it’s just all blazing and shining with warmth--curtains that just clothe the place, and pictures on the walls, and grand carpets that your foot sinks in. It may not be such good taste, but it is far more comfortable. And Mrs. Rowland is a most personable woman, and him a very good sort of a man.” “And the daughter, Aunt Eliza?” cried the miss, to whom this was the most interesting part of all. “The daughter--well she’s just a young lady like the rest. I asked her to come to-morrow, and you can judge for yourself,” Miss Eliza said. The minister and his wife formed a still more interesting part of the immediate society of the little place, and puzzled Evelyn, who had been brought up in the somewhat narrow creed of her country to ignore everything but “the Church,” and to look with small respect upon dissenters in general as a community of uneducated people. She did not at all know what to make of the trim and well dressed pair who called upon her, he in garments almost more sacerdotal than if he had been a priest of All Saints, Elizabeth Street, and she with the fashionable cut of her dress shadowed by the inevitable mackintosh. This was the Scotch minister whom she had met with in pictures in a very different aspect, but of whom she knew nothing in real life except that she had a puzzled comprehension that he did not belong to “the Church,” but yet was--what was he?--a kind of vicar or rector after another fashion, like yet quite unlike the vicars and rectors whom she knew. Mrs. Rowland had her limitations like others, and did not know what to think. But she was, as ever, charmingly polite, and did her best to please these bewildering neighbours. She apologised for not having yet been to church, giving some excuse of tiredness or headache. As a matter of fact the headache had been a result of the same bewilderment which made her so curious and so unassured about the position of Mr. Dean. A Scottish gentlewoman in England would have had no such ignorance; which is a curious fact, and one, perhaps, which proves the superiority of the wealthier and more remote ecclesiastical economy. “I dare say,” said Mrs. Dean, “that you were not sure if you should come to our church. There is an Episcopalian Chapel in Kilrossie. As you are English, Mrs. Rowland, it’s perhaps there you should go.”