hill, included in their dutiful ranks any being of higher degree than
might have been found in those other congregations, that, some
nineteen hundred years earlier, were gathered in the hills of Galilee;
those humble crowds who came to hear Christ preach, of whom it was
said that they were of the common people, and that they heard Him
gladly. Miss Frederica was as good a Christian--in some ways probably
a better one--as might have been found in the white chapel, but it was
impossible for her not to feel, what was, indeed, felt, with a
singular mixture of satisfaction and disapproval, by the majority of
the white chapel's congregation, that Larry's parents had, socially,
been ill-advised when they "made a Roman of him." In the creed of Mary
Twomey, and her fellows, it was only in conformity with natural law in
the spiritual world that ginthry should go to church, and the like of
herself to chapel. She, no more than Frederica, could subdue the
feeling of incongruity imparted by the fact of Master Larry and
herself worshipping together; it was as though, if she had run into
the kitchen to get a sup of hot water, or the wetting of her mouth o'
tay, she had found him sitting among the maids in the servants' hall.
Mary Twomey, and her fellows, would have indignantly repudiated the
idea of taking service with one of their own church. "No! Thank God! I
never sank to that!" Mary had once said, when such had been imputed to
her. There was no question of religion in it. Merely of fitness. So
inveterate in the older Ireland is, or was, what Christian might have
considered to be the outcome of The Spirit of the Nation, but that, in
this special connection, may with, perhaps, greater accuracy, be
ascribed to the aristocratic instinct.

Something like a sheet of thin ice had come into existence between
Larry's life and that of his aunt. It had come gradually, almost
imperceptibly. There had been a time, after his First Communion, when