"Your late husband and I shared a tutor for two years at the age of nine," he said. "I attended his funeral. You may not have noticed."
"I noticed," she said quietly. "You stood at the very back and left before the bell finished."
A pause that I thought contained more than either of them expected. Then she folded her hands in her lap and said, quite simply, "Old acquaintances, then, Your Grace."
Miss Portia Pemberton, I am pleased to report, arrived at our row to find it entirely full.
Through the service, he sat like a man enduring a siege, and Miss Pemberton's gaze upon our bench could have lit kindling. When the first hymn was given out, Cecily tilted her open book toward him without being asked. He took the other edge of it, and I heard him murmur, "You are doing me a greater kindness than you know, madam."
"Then repay it by singing properly, Your Grace," she said. "The second line rises."