She was making these remarks as the clock struck the hour, and her father entered the room.
"Beauclerk came early, dear papa," said she, "because he had something to tell us. His engagement is broken off."
Lord Garrow looked the grief appropriate to the news, and disguised, as well as he could, his dismay at its probable development. He murmured, "Tut! tut!" a number of times, held up his hands, and nodded his head from side to side.
"I wish nothing said against poor Agnes," observed Reckage; "her mistakes are those of a generous, impetuous girl. Don't judge her hastily. All, I feel certain, has happened for the best."
"I am devoted to dear Agnes," said Sara, "but I never, never thought that she was the wife for Beauclerk."
Then she stepped forward to greet Lady Augusta Hammit, who was at that moment announced. Lady Augusta was a tall woman about thirty-five years of age, with a handsome, sallow face, a superb neck, beautiful arms, hair the colour of ashes, pale lips, and large, gleaming white teeth. Unmarried, aristocratic, ordinarily well-off, and exceptionally pious according to her lights, she was a prominent figure in all work connected with the Moderate Party in the Church of England. In her opinion, foreigners might be permitted the idolatries of Rome; as for the English, Wesley was a lunatic; Pusey, a weak good creature; Newman was a traitor; Manning, a mistake. The one vital force on whom she depended for her spiritual illumination and her life's security was the Rev. Edwin Pole-Knox. "Pole-Knox," she said, "will save us yet." This good and industrious young man, a few years her junior, had been chaplain--mainly through Lady Augusta's devoted exertions--to three bishops. He did every credit to his patroness, but hints were already in the air on the subject of ingratitude. Some said he lacked ambition; others murmured dark conjectures about his heartlessness. It was left to the Lady Augusta's fellow-labourers in the sphere of beneficence to blurt out, with odious vulgarity, that he would never marry her in this world. She entered the room that evening in her haughtiest manner, for Pole-Knox was following close upon her heels, and she wished to justify the extreme deference which he showed her so properly in public, and perhaps with morbid conscientiousness in _tête-à-tête_.