It never
occurred to her that he could be bored by her impressions
in these greatest days of her life. "To see a half-dozen
well-groomed young men settle the affairs of India and
Australia in a short, indifferent colloquy! How shy and
awkward they were, too! They actually stuttered out
their sentences in their fear of posing or seeming
pretentious. So English! Don't you think it was very
English, George?"
"I really did not think about it at all. I have had very
different things to occupy me," said George, coldly
superior to all mothers and Parliaments. This is the
church."
The cab stopped before an iron door between two shops
in the most thronged part of Bishopsgate Street. He
pushed it open, and they passed suddenly out of the
hurrying crowd into the solemn silence of an ancient
dingy building. A dim light fell through a noble window
of the thirteenth century upon cheap wooden pews. The
church was empty, and had that curious significance and
half-spoken message of its own which belongs to a vacant
house.
"I remember," whispered Frances, awestruck. "This was
built by the first Christian convert, St. Ethelburga."
"You believe every thing, mother!" said George irritably.
She wandered about, looking at the sombre walls and
inscriptions, and then back uneasily, to his moody face.
Suddenly she came up to him as he stood leaning against
a pillar. "Something has happened!" she said. "You did
not bring me here to look at the church.
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