Augustina of course dislikes the prospect of the Froswick day. But, really, Augustina must put up with it! The Reverend Mother will come for the afternoon, and keep her company. Such civility of late on the part of all the Catholic friends of Bannisdale towards Miss Fountain!--a civility always on the watch, week by week, day by day--that never yields itself for an instant, has never a human impulse, an unguarded tone. Father Leadham is there one day--he makes a point of talking with Miss Fountain. He leads the conversation to Cambridge, to her father--his keen glance upon her all the time, the hidden life of the convert and the mystic leaping every now and then to the surface, and driven down again by a will that makes itself felt--even by so cool a listener--as a living tyrannous thing, developed out of all proportion to, nay at the cruel expense of, the rest of the personality. Yet it is no will of the man's own--it is the will of his order, of his faith. And why these repeated stray references to Bannisdale--to its owner--to the owner's goings and comings? They are hardly questions, but they might easily have done the work of questions had the person addressed been willing. Laura laughs to think of it.
Ah! well--but discretion to-day, discretion to-morrow, discretion always, is not the most amusing of diets. How dumb, how tame, has she become! There is no one to fight with, nothing whereon to let loose the sharp-edged words and sayings that lie so close behind the girl's shut lips. How amazing that one should positively miss those fuller activities in the chapel that depend on the Squire's presence! Father Bowles says Mass there twice a week; the light still burns before the altar; several times a day Augustina disappears within the heavy doors. But when Mr. Helbeck is at home, the place becomes, as it were, the strong heart of the house. It beats through the whole organism; so that no one can ignore or forget it.
What is it that makes the difference when he returns? Unwillingly, the mind shapes its reply. A sense of unity and law comes back into the house--a hidden dignity and poetry. The Squire's black head carries with it stern reminders, reminders that challenge or provoke; but "he nothing common does nor mean," and smaller mortals, as the weeks go by, begin to feel their hot angers and criticisms driven back upon themselves, to realise the strange persistency and force of the religious life.