She should not be too far away if her daughter-in-law had need of her, and by moving that little way off she should do much to prevent her son's chafing against the barriers of domesticity. It would be easier for Dorothy to act as hostess of the shooting-parties that were arranged for the autumn if she were apparent as the only hostess. In the administration of the village the two countesses shared equally--the dowager by superintending the making of soup and gruel for sick villagers, Dorothy by assisting at its distribution. The rector won Dorothy's heart by his readiness to discuss with her the history of the great family into which she had married, and by preparing a second edition of his _Clarehaven and the Clares_ for when it should be wanted, affixing against the fifth earl's name an asterisk, like a second star of Bethlehem, that should direct the wise reader to this foot-note: ...The present Earl in January, 1906, delighted his many friends and well-wishers in the county by wedding the beautiful Miss Dorothy Lonsdale, a distant connection of that Lord Cleveden who is famous as a most capable administrator in the land of the golden wattle and upon "India's coral strand." She for her part won Mr. Beadon's heart by often attending his services at Clarehaven, and not merely by attending herself, but by insisting upon Mrs. Bitterplum's and Mrs. Smith's attending, too. This arrangement suited everybody, because the dowager at Little Cherrington was able to worship her stained-glass window without a sense that, whatever she might be before God's throne, she was now of secondary importance in the church. The step up that the rector had promised himself for Easter was effected without an apoplexy from Mr. Kingdon, possibly because the white stole did not inflame his taurine eye. At Whitsuntide, however, when a red stole appeared, his face followed the liturgical sequence, and there was a painful scene in the churchyard on a hot morning in early June. Dorothy, on being appealed to by the rector, drove over to Cherrington Hall that afternoon and remonstrated with Mr. Kingdon on his inconsiderate behavior. She pointed out that Mrs. Beadon was in an interesting condition at the moment and that if Mr. Kingdon had his prejudices to consider, Mr. Beadon had his conscience; that it was not right for the squire to add fuel to the ancient rivalry between Great and Little Cherrington; and finally that inasmuch as the bishop was shortly coming to stay at Clare for a confirmation, it would be unkind to pain his sensitive diocesan spirit with these parochial disputes. Dorothy's arguments may not have convinced the squire, but her beauty and condescension penetrated where logic was powerless, and Mr. Beadon was allowed to preach for more than twenty bee-loud Sundays after Trinity wearing a grass-green stole round his neck and with never a word of protest from the squire. Nor were the Sundays within the octaves of St. Peter or St.