"Good morning," he said, very quietly, looking straight ahead at the altar.
"Good morning, Your Grace."
"I don't believe I have had the honour."
"No," said Frances. "You haven't."
The curate came out of the vestry in his surplice and went to the reading desk. "When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed," he read, in a high clear voice that cracked slightly on wickedness, "and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive."
"Madam," said the Duke of Halvergate, under the words, "I must ask who you are."
"You may ask," said Frances, and stood up for the Exhortation.
He stood up beside her. He had a prayer book but did not open it; he knew the words. So did she. They went through the General Confession side by side, she in her low, clear voice and he in a rough baritone that came in a little late on every clause as though it were following a gun-carriage, and Frances found that it was a very strange thing to confess that one had left undone those things which one ought to have done, and done those things which one ought not to have done, next to a duke whose pew one had taken without asking. She kept her eyes on the Commandments. Robin, between them, said "miserable offenders" with great relish, because he liked the sound of it.
They sat through the Venite and the psalms. Frances was aware the entire time, as one is aware of a fire in a room, of the Duke beside her, and of the fact that he was not looking at her, and of the fact that the Dowager Duchess across the aisle was looking at nothing else. When they knelt for the Litany, the Duke's shoulder was perhaps two feet from her own, with Robin's small black back between. Robin was kneeling the way his father had taught him, very upright, with his hands together under his chin, and the Duke glanced down at him once, and frowned, and looked away.
The sermon was on the text of the wicked man again, and ran to forty minutes. The curate was of the opinion that wickedness was chiefly to be found in Manchester, where it had lately gathered in fields to hear radical orators, and that the yeomanry had done no more than its duty. Robin, who had been very good, began to swing his feet.