They realized they must put up with the restaurant for meals, but
at least the women folk should not pander to the customs of the
place and wear evening dress. Their subdued black gowns were
fastened to the throat. Stella Rawson felt absolutely excited--she
was twenty-one years old, but this was the first time she had ever
dined in a fashionable restaurant, and it almost seemed like
something deliciously wrong.

Life in the Cathedral Close where they lived in England was not
highly exhilarating, and when its duties were over it contained
only mild gossip and endless tea-parties and garden-parties by way
of recreation.

Canon and the Honorable Mrs. Ebley were fairly rich people. The
Uncle Erasmus' call to the church had been answered from
inclination--not necessity. His heart was in his work. He was a
good man and did his duty according to the width of the lights in
which he had been brought up.

Mrs. Ebley did more than her duty--and had often too much
momentum, which now and then upset other people's apple carts.

She had, in fact, been the moving spirit in the bringing about of
her niece Stella's engagement to the Bishop's junior chaplain, a
young gentleman of aesthetic aspirations and eight hundred a year
of his own.

Stella herself had never been enthusiastic about the affair. As a
man, Eustace Medlicott said absolutely nothing at all to her--