On the Sunday morning after the talk recorded in the last chapter, Elsie
made herself ready to go to meeting. She was dressed much as usual,
excepting that she wore a thick veil, turned aside, but ready to conceal
her features. It was natural enough that she should not wish to be
looked in the face by curious persons who would be staring to see what
effect the occurrence of the past week had had on her spirits. Her
father attended her willingly; and they took their seats in the pew,
somewhat to the surprise of many, who had hardly expected to see them,
after so humiliating a family development as the attempted crime of their
kinsman had just been furnishing for the astonishment of the public.

The Reverend Mr. Fairweather was now in his coldest mood. He had passed
through the period of feverish excitement which marks a change of
religious opinion. At first, when he had began to doubt his own
theological positions, he had defended them against himself with more
ingenuity and interest, perhaps, than he could have done against another;
because men rarely take the trouble to understand anybody's difficulties
in a question but their own. After this, as he began to draw off from
different points of his old belief, the cautious disentangling of himself
from one mesh after another gave sharpness to his intellect, and the
tremulous eagerness with which he seized upon the doctrine which, piece
by piece, under various pretexts and with various disguises, he was
appropriating, gave interest and something like passion to his words.
But when he had gradually accustomed his people to his new phraseology,
and was really adjusting his sermons and his service to disguise his
thoughts, he lost at once all his intellectual acuteness and all his
spiritual fervor.

Elsie sat quietly through the first part of the service, which was
conducted in the cold, mechanical way to be expected. Her face was
hidden by her veil; but her father knew her state of feeling, as well by
her movements and attitudes as by the expression of her features. The
hymn had been sung, the short prayer offered, the Bible read, and the
long prayer was about to begin. This was the time at which the "notes"
of any who were in affliction from loss of friends, the sick who were
doubtful of recovery, those who had cause to be grateful for preservation
of life or other signal blessing, were wont to be read.

Just then it was that Dudley Veneer noticed that his daughter