picture of a beautiful girl of one-and-twenty, which hung opposite
the fireplace, had once been her portrait. She had been brought up,
as thoroughly as a woman could be brought up, in those days, to be a
governess. The war prevented her education abroad, but her father,
who was a clergyman, not too rich, engaged a French emigrant lady to
live in his house to teach her French and other accomplishments. She
consequently spoke French perfectly, and she could also read and
speak Spanish fairly well, for the French lady had spent some years
in Spain. Mr Hopgood had never been particularly in earnest about
religion, but his wife was a believer, neither High Church nor Low
Church, but inclined towards a kind of quietism not uncommon in the
Church of England, even during its bad time, a reaction against the
formalism which generally prevailed. When she married, Mrs Hopgood
did not altogether follow her husband. She never separated herself
from her faith, and never would have confessed that she had separated
herself from her church. But although she knew that his creed
externally was not hers, her own was not sharply cut, and she
persuaded herself that, in substance, his and her belief were
identical. As she grew older her relationship to the Unseen became
more and more intimate, but she was less and less inclined to
criticise her husband's freedom, or to impose on the children a rule
which they would certainly have observed, but only for her sake.
Every now and then she felt a little lonely; when, for example, she
read one or two books which were particularly her own; when she
thought of her dead father and mother, and when she prayed her
solitary prayer. Mr Hopgood took great pains never to disturb that
sacred moment. Indeed, he never for an instant permitted a finger to
be laid upon what she considered precious. He loved her because she
had the strength to be what she was when he first knew her and she
had so fascinated him. He would have been disappointed if the