He feigned to be busy with one of the saddles.
The magistrate glanced at him sharply.
V It was a strange dinner that day.
Outwardly, again, all was as usual--as it might have been on any other Sunday in spring.

The three gentlemen sat at the high table, facing down the hall; and, since there was no reading, and since it was a festival, there was no lack of conversation.

The servants came in as usual with the dishes--there was roast lamb to-day, according to old usage, among the rest; and three or four wines.

A little fire burned against the reredos, for cheerfulness rather than warmth, and the spring sunshine flowed in through the clear-glass windows, bright and genial.
Yet the difference was profound.

Certainly there was no talk, overheard at least by the servants, which might not have been on any Sunday for the last twenty years: the congratulations and good wishes, or whatever they were, must have been spoken between the three in the parlour before dinner; and they spoke now of harmless usual things--news of the countryside and tales from Derby; gossip of affairs of State; of her Grace, who, in a manner unthinkable, even by now dominated the imagination of England.