empty save for a woman who stood staring up at one of our windows. We have some rather fine old stained glass, and indeed the church itself is well worth looking at. She turned at my footsteps, and I saw that it was Mrs. Lestrange.
We both hesitated a moment, and then I said:
“I hope you like our little church.”
“I’ve been admiring the screen,” she said.
Her voice was pleasant, low, yet very distinct, with a clear-cut enunciation. She added:
“I’m so sorry to have missed your wife yesterday.”
We talked a few minutes longer about the church. She was evidently a cultured woman who knew something of Church history and architecture. We left the building together and walked down the road, since one way to the Vicarage led past her house. As we arrived at the gate, she said pleasantly:
“Come in, won’t you? And tell me what you think of what I have done.”
I accepted the invitation. Little Gates had formerly belonged to an Anglo-Indian colonel, and I could not help feeling relieved by the disappearance of the brass tables and Burmese idols. It was furnished now very simply, but in exquisite taste. There was a sense of harmony and rest about it.
Yet I wondered more and more what had brought such a woman as Mrs. Lestrange to St. Mary Mead. She was so very clearly a woman of the world that it seemed a strange taste to bury herself in a country village.
In clear light of her drawing-room I had an opportunity of observing her closely for the first time.