CHAPTER IV
THE DOMESTIC CHAPLAIN'S TESTIMONY
WHEN Mrs. Armstrong came down to breakfast her hostess told her, with many apologies, that Sir Michael had left for London with Father Ripon. They had gone by an early train. Matters of great moment were afoot.
As this was being explained Mr. Wilson, the private chaplain, Schuabe, and Canon Walke entered the room. The Duke of Suffolk did not appear.
A long, low room panelled in white, over which a huge fire of logs cast occasional cheery reflections, was used as a breakfast-room. Here and there the quiet simplicity of the place was violently disturbed by great gouts of colour, startling notes which, so cunningly had they been arranged in alternate opulence and denial, were harmonised with their background.
A curtain of Tyrian purple, a sea picture full of gloom and glory, red light and wind; a bronze head, with brilliant, lifelike enamel eyes, the features swollen and brutal, from Sabacio — these were the means used by the young artist employed by Sir Michael to decorate the room.
The long windows, hewn out of a six-foot wall, presented a sombre vista of great leafless trees standing in the trackless snow, touched here and there with the ruddiness of the winter sun.
The glowing fire, the luxurious domesticity of the
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