And then Marian blushed, and laughed aloud, half ashamed to be detected in this evident allusion to Rachel’s castles in the air. Her laugh attracted the attention of a countrywoman who just then came out to the door of a little wayside cottage. She made them a little bob of a curtsy, like Hannah’s, and asked if they wanted to see the church, “’cause I don’t think the gentlemen would mind,” said the clerk’s wife, the privileged bearer of the ecclesiastical keys; and Mr Atheling, hearing the question, answered over the heads of his daughters, “Yes, certainly they would go.” So they all went after her dutifully over the stile, and along a field-path by a rustling growth of wheat, spotted with red poppies, for which Bell and Beau sighed and cried in vain, and came at last to a pretty small church, of the architectural style and period of which this benighted family were most entirely ignorant. Mr Atheling, indeed, had a vague idea that it was “Gothic,” but would not have liked to commit himself even to that general principle--for the days of religious architecture and church restorations were all since Mr Atheling’s time.
They went in accordingly under a low round-arched doorway, solemn and ponderous, entirely unconscious of the “tressured ornament” which antiquaries came far to see; and, looking with a certain awe at the heavy and solemn arches of the little old Saxon church, were rather more personally attracted, we are pained to confess, by a group of gentlemen within the sacred verge of the chancel, discussing something with solemnity and earnestness, as if it were a question of life and death. Foremost in this group, but occupying, as it seemed, rather an explanatory and apologetic place, and listening with evident anxiety to the deliverance of the others, was a young man of commanding appearance, extremely tall, with a little of the look of ascetic abstraction which belongs to the loftier members of the very high High Church. As the Athelings approached rather timidly under the escort of their humble guide, this gentleman eyed them, with a mixture of observation and haughtiness, as they might have been eyed by the proprietor of the domain. Then he recognised Mr Atheling with such a recognition as the same reigning lord and master might bestow upon an intruder who was only mistaken and not presumptuous. The father of the family rose to the occasion, his colour increased; he drew himself up, and made a formal but really dignified bow to the young clergyman. The little group of advisers did not pause a minute in their discussion; and odd words, which they were not in the habit of hearing, fell upon the ears of Agnes and Marian. “Bad in an archaic point of view--extremely bad; and I never can forgive errors of detail; the best examples are so accessible,” said one gentleman. “I do not agree with you. I remember an instance at Amiens,” interrupted another. “Amiens, my dear sir!--exactly what I mean to say,” cried the first speaker; “behind the date of Winterbourne a couple of hundred years--late work--a debased style. In a church of this period everything ought to be severe.”