d wait and wonder in the anteroom
till his Grace came in and gave the signal for dinner. And at last the
blow fell.

On one day in June, Anthony, who had been on a visit to Isabel at Great
Keynes, returned to Lambeth in time for morning prayer and dinner just
before the gates were shut by the porter, having ridden up early with a
couple of grooms. There seemed to him to be an air of constraint abroad
as the guests and members of the household gathered for dinner. There
were no guests of high dignity that day, and the Archbishop sat at his
own table silent and apart. Anthony, from his place at the steward's
table, noticed that he ate very sparingly, and that he appeared even more
preoccupied and distressed than usual. His short-sighted eyes, kind and
brown, surrounded by wrinkles from his habit of peering closely at
everything, seemed full of sadness and perplexity, and his hand fumbled
with his bread continually. Anthony did not like to ask anything of his
neighbours, as there were one or two strangers dining at the steward's
table that day; and the moment dinner was over, and grace had been said
and the Archbishop retired with his little procession preceded by a white
wand, an usher came running back to tell Master Norris that his Grace
desired to see him at once in the inner cloister.

Anthony hastened round through the court between the hall and the river,
and found the Archbishop walking up and down in his black habit with the
round flapped cap, that, as a Puritan, he preferred to the square
head-dress of the more ecclesiastically-minded clergy, still looking
troubled and cast down, continually stroking his dark forked beard, and
talking to one of his secretaries. Anthony stood at a little distance at
the open side of the court near the river, cap in hand, waiting till the
Archbishop should beckon him. The two went up and down in the shade in
the open court outside the cloisters, where the pump stood, and where the
pulpit had been erected for the Queen's famous visit to his predecessor;
when she had sat in a gallery over the cloister and heard the chaplain's
sermon. On the north rose up the roof of the chapel. The cloisters
themselves were poor buildings--little more than passages with a
continuous row of square windows running along them the height of a man's
head.

After a few minutes the secretary left the Archbishop with an obeisance,
and hastened into the house through the cloister, and presently the
Archbis