She could not hide her distress and dismay from the two
girls.
"How did she force him into it? One is almost driven to
believe in hypnotism," she cried.
Lucy Dunbar had no joke to make about it to-day. The
merry little girl was silent, having, she said, a
headache.
"You've had too much cathedral!" said Miss Hassard. "And
the whole church is wretchedly out of drawing!"
Jean Hassard had studied art at Pond City in Dakota, and
her soul's hope had been to follow Marie Bashkirtseff's
career in Paris. But her father had morally handcuffed
her and put her into Clara's custody for a year. It was
hard! To be led about to old churches, respectable as
her grandmother, when she might have been studying
the nude in a mixed class! She rattled her chains
disagreeably at every step.
"The mesalliance is on the other side," she told Lucy
privately. "A woman of the world who knew life, to marry
that bloodless, finical priest!"
"He was not bloodless. He loved her."
Mr. Perry came up with them from Canterbury, being
secretly alarmed about Miss Dunbar's headache. Nobody
took proper care of that lovely child! He had attached
himself to Miss Vance's party in England; he dropped in
every evening to tell of his interviews with Gladstone or
Mrs. Oliphant or an artist or a duke. It was delightful
to the girls to come so close to these unknown great
folks. They felt quite like peris, just outside the
court of heaven, with the gate a little bit ajar.
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