ministrations indispensable to the tottering vitality of Lady Bray;
with what cunning she herself had persuaded the old woman to be
present at her garden parties over the last five years, though the
poor creature was nothing but the head of death and the bones of decay,
barely kept together by the common support of her clothes, it would
be almost impossible to imagine. But to entertain Lady Bray; to be
even a friend of her ladyship was, in Cailsham in those days, a key
to the secret chamber of social success. And Mrs. Bishop held it.

The Rev. Samuel himself gave her ladyship a copy of the Holy Bible,
bound in the best Russian leather, with various texts marked, which
had never failed to bring her comfort when intoned in the meek
monotony of his gentle voice. On the fly-leaf he had inscribed her
name--Lady Bray, from her devoted friend and rector, Samuel Bishop.

On Sundays it was quite a feature of the Communion Service to see
the state and ceremony with which the Holy Eucharist was carried down
the aisle to the Bray's family pew, where the old lady sat, huddled
and alone in one of the corners, like a dead body covered clumsily
with a black pall. One of the parishioners, who had not that good
fortune of being personally acquainted with Lady Bray declared that
she really almost objected to this invariable interruption of the
service.

"I assure you," she said, "it--it practically amounts to a procession
like they have in the Roman Catholic Church."

It was this lady who--whenever the occasion demanded, which was not
often--bracketed in a breath Roman Catholics and unfortunate women
of the street, and alluded to them jointly as--poor creatures.