t, but it is really my mother's church. It was due to her
that it was built."

Thus was comedy played--and Honora by no the means sure that it was a
comedy. Even her alert instinct had not been able to detect the acting,
and the intervening hours were spent in speculating whether her fears
had not been overdone. Nevertheless, under the eyes of Starling, at
twenty minutes to eleven she stepped into the victoria with an outward
courage, and drove down the shady avenue towards the gates. Sweet-toned
bells were ringing as she reached the residence portion of the town,
and subdued pedestrians in groups and couples made their way along the
sidewalks. They stared at her; and she in turn, with heightened colour,
stared at her coachman's back. After all, this first Sunday would be the
most difficult.

The carriage turned into a street arched by old elms, and flanked by
the houses of the most prosperous townspeople. Some of these were of
the old-fashioned, classic type, and others new examples of a national
architecture seeking to find itself,--white and yellow colonial,
roughcast modifications of the Shakespearian period, and nondescript
mixtures of cobblestones and shingles. Each was surrounded by trim lawns
and shrubbery. The church itself was set back from the street. It was of
bluish stone, and half covered with Virginia creeper.

At this point, had the opportunity for a secret retreat presented
itself, Honora would have embraced it, for until now she had not
realized the full extent of the ordeal. Had her arrival been heralded by
sounding trumpets, the sensation it caused could not have been greater.
In her Eden, the world had been forgotten; the hum of gossip beyond the
gates had not reached her. But now, as the horses approached the curb,
their restive feet clattering on the hard pavement, in the darkened
interior of the church she saw faces turned, and entering worshippers
pausing in the doorway. Something of what the event meant for Grenoble
dawned upon her: something, not all; but all that she could bear.

If it be true that there is no courage equal to that which a great
love begets in a woman, Honora's at that moment was sublime. Her cheeks
tingled, and her knees weakened under her as she ran the gantlet to the
church door, where she was met by a gentleman on whose face she read
astonishment unalloyed: amazement, perhaps, is not too strong a word for
the sensation it conveyed to her, and it occurred to her afterwa