Page:The council of seven.djvu/132



The next day, which was Sunday, began with a surprise for Helen. When she came downstairs, exactly two minutes after the clock chimed half past eight, she found the servants to the number of sixteen kneeling in the hall and Lady Elizabeth reading prayers in a rigid evangelical manner. Suddenly, the heart of Helen took a leap across the Atlantic. The wanderer was back in her own home; she saw and heard her own mother, who alone of created beings she suspected of practicing this ritual. The flat voice, with its curious, low monotone, the stiffness of the central figure and those around it, even the soft play of light from the diamond panes upon the wonderful Tudor paneling, brought back her childhood with a rush. As Helen knelt in the midst of these people she was once again among her own.

John had had a fairly good night. His temperature was back to normal, and his Spartan parent had given a tardy consent that, provided Dr. Evans, who was expected in the course of the morning, confirmed it,