“I suppose so, if we go at all,” he replied.  “Old Stopford imposes a pretty heavy penalty.”

“Too heavy for you?” she asked, and smiled at him as she handed him the cup.

“Too heavy for me,” he said, returning her smile.  “To tell you the truth, Honora, I had an overdose of church in my youth, here and at school, and I’ve been trying to even up ever since.”

“You’d like me to go, wouldn’t you, Hugh?” she ventured, after a silence.

“Indeed I should,” he answered, and again she wondered to what extent his cordiality was studied, or whether it were studied at all.  “I’m very fond of that church, in spite of the fact that—­that I may be said to dissemble my fondness.”  She laughed with him, and he became serious.  “I still contribute—­the family’s share toward its support.  My father was very proud of it, but it is really my mother’s church.  It was due to her that it was built.”

Thus was comedy played—­and Honora by no the means sure that it was a comedy.  Even her alert instinct had not been able to detect the acting, and the intervening hours were spent in speculating whether her fears had not been overdone.  Nevertheless, under the eyes of Starling, at twenty minutes to eleven she stepped into the victoria with an outward courage, and drove down the shady avenue towards the gates.  Sweet-toned bells were ringing as she reached the residence portion of the town, and subdued pedestrians in groups and couples made their way along the sidewalks.  They stared at her; and she in turn, with heightened colour, stared at her coachman’s back.  After all, this first Sunday would be the most difficult.

The carriage turned into a street arched by old elms, and flanked by the houses of the most prosperous townspeople.  Some of these were of the old-fashioned, classic type, and others new examples of a national architecture seeking to find itself,—­white and yellow colonial, roughcast modifications of the Shakespearian period, and nondescript mixtures of cobblestones and shingles.  Each was surrounded by trim lawns and shrubbery.  The church itself was set back from the street.  It was of bluish stone, and half covered with Virginia creeper.

At this point, had the opportunity for a secret retreat presented itself, Honora would have embraced it, for until now she had not realized the full extent of the ordeal.  Had her arrival been heralded by sounding trumpets, the sensation it caused could not have been greater.  In her Eden, the world had been forgotten; the hum of gossip beyond the gates had not reached her.  But now, as the horses approached the curb, their restive feet clattering on the hard pavement, in the darkened interior of the church she saw faces turned, and entering worshippers pausing in the doorway.  Something of what the event meant for Grenoble dawned upon her:  something, not all; but all that she could bear.