, but Grandmama, it must be remembered, was
eighty-four.) "You will have to guard against that. In a way it was a
pity you didn't take up church-going instead; religion lasts."

"And these quackeries do not," Grandmama finished her sentence to
herself, not wishing to be discouraging.

"Not always," Mrs. Hilary truly replied, meaning that religion did not
always last.

"No," Grandmama agreed. "Unfortunately not always. Particularly when it
is High Church. There was your uncle Bruce, of course...."

Mrs. Hilary's uncle Bruce, who had been High Church for a season, and had
even taken Orders in the year 1860, but whose faith had wilted in the
heat and toil of the day, so that by 1870 he was an agnostic barrister,
took Grandmama back through the last century, and she became reminiscent
over the Tractarian movement, and, later, the Ritualists.

"The Queen never could abide them," said Grandmama. "Nor could Lord
Beaconsfield, nor your father, though he was always kind and tolerant.
I remember when Dr. Jowett came to stay with us, how they talked about
it.... Ah well, they've become very prominent since then, and done a
great deal of good work, and there are many very able, excellent men and
women among them.... But they're not High Church any longer, they tell
me. They're Catholics in these days. I don't know enough of them to judge
them, but I don't think they can have the dignity of the old High Church
party, for if they had I can't imagine that Gilbert's wife, for instance,
would have joined them, even for so short a time as she did.... Well, it
suits some people, and psycho-analysis obviously suits others. Only I do
hope you will try to keep moderate and balanced, my child, and not
believe all this young man tells you. Parts of it do sound so very
strange."

(But Mrs. Hilary would not have dreamt of repeating to Grandmama the
strangest parts of all.)

"I feel a new woman," she said, fervently, and Grandmama smiled, well
pleased, thinking that it certainly did seem rather like the old
evangelical conversions of her youth. (Which, of course, did not always
last, any more than the High Church equivalents did.)

All Grandmama committed herself to, in her elderly caution, which came
however less from age than from having known Mrs. Hilary for sixty-three
years, was "Well, well, we must see."

3

And then Rosalind's letter came. It came by the afternoon post--the big,
mauve, scented, sprawled sheets, dashingly mono