*

Captain Pratt's critical eye travelled over the congregation. It
absolutely ignored Mrs. Gresley and Fraeulein. It lingered momentarily on
Hester. He knew what he called "breeding" when he saw it, and he was
aware that Hester possessed it, though his sisters would have laughed at
the idea. He had seen many well-bred women on social pinnacles look like
that, whose houses were at present barred against him. The Pratt sisters
were fixed into their smartness as some faces are fixed into a grin. It
was not spontaneous, fugitive, evanescent as a smile, gracefully worn,
or lightly laid aside, as in Hester's case. He had known Hester slightly
in London for several years. He had seen her on terms of intimacy, such
as she never showed to his sisters, with inaccessible men and women with
whom he had achieved a bare acquaintance, but whom, in spite of many
carefully concealed advances, he had found it impossible to know better.
Captain Pratt had reached that stage in his profession of raising
himself when he had become a social barometer. He was excessively
careful whom he knew, what women he danced with, what houses he visited;
and any of his acquaintances who cared to ascertain their own social
status to a hair's-breadth had only to apply to it the touchstone of
Captain Pratt's manner towards them.

Hester, who grasped many facts of that kind, was always amused by the
cold consideration with which he treated her on his rare visits to the
parental Towers; and which his sisters could only construe as a sign
that "Algy was gone on Hessie."

"But he will never marry her," they told each other. "Algy looks
higher."

It was true. If Hester had been Lady Hester, it is possible that the
surname of Pratt, if frequently refused by stouter women, might
eventually have been offered to her. But Captain Pratt was determined
to marry rank, and nothing short of a Lady Something was of any use to
him. An Honorable was better than nothing, but it did not count for much
with him. It had a way of absenting itself when wanted. No one was
announced as an Honorable. It did not even appear on cards. It might he
overlooked. Rank, to be of any practical value, must be apparent,
obvious. Lady Georgiana Pratt, Lady Evelina Pratt! Any name would do
with that prefix. His eye travelled as far as Sybell and stopped again.
She was "the right sort" herself, and she dressed in the right way. Why
could not Ada and Selina imitate her? But he had never forgi