But when Dorothy Vaughan had passed a corner of the house to another
garden more ancient in aspect, and in some things quaint even to
grotesqueness, she was in front of a portion of the house which
indicated a far statelier past--closed and done with, like the rooms
within those shuttered windows. The inhabited wing she had left
looked like the dwelling of a yeoman farming his own land; nor did
this appearance greatly belie the present position of the family.
For generations it had been slowly descending in the scale of
worldly account, and the small portion of the house occupied by the
widow and daughter of sir Ringwood Vaughan was larger than their
means could match with correspondent outlay. Such, however, was the
character of lady Vaughan, that, although she mingled little with
the great families in the neighbourhood, she was so much respected,
that she would have been a welcome visitor to most of them.

The reverend Mr. Matthew Herbert was a clergyman from the Welsh
border, a man of some note and influence, who had been the personal
friend both of his late relative George Herbert and of the famous
Dr. Donne. Strongly attached to the English church, and recoiling
with disgust from the practices of the puritans--as much, perhaps,
from refinement of taste as abhorrence of schism--he had never yet
fallen into such a passion for episcopacy as to feel any cordiality
towards the schemes of the archbishop. To those who knew him his
silence concerning it was a louder protest against the policy of
Laud than the fiercest denunciations of the puritans. Once only had
he been heard to utter himself unguardedly in respect of the
primate, and that was amongst friends, and after the second glass
permitted of his cousin George. 'Tut! laud me no Laud,' he said. 'A
skipping bishop is worse than a skipping king.' Once also he had