ave the negroes and the dead. The service had commenced.
Through the open door came to him Darden's voice: "_Dearly beloved
brethren_"--

Haward waited, leaning against a tomb deep graven with a coat of arms and
much stately Latin, until the singing clave the air, when he entered the
building, and passed down the aisle to his own pew, the chiefest in the
place. He was aware of the flutter and whisper on either hand,--perhaps he
did not find it unpleasing. Diogenes may have carried his lantern not
merely to find a man, but to show one as well, and a philosopher in a pale
gray riding dress, cut after the latest mode, with silver lace and a fall
of Mechlin, may be trusted to know the value as well as the vanity of
sublunary things.

Of the gathering, which was not large, two thirds, perhaps, were people of
condition; and in the country, where occasions for display did not present
themselves uncalled, it was highly becoming to worship the Lord in fine
clothes. So there were broken rainbows in the tall pews, with a soft
waving of fans to and fro in the essenced air, and a low rustle of silk.
The men went as fine as the women, and the June sunshine, pouring in upon
all this lustre and color, made a flower-bed of the assemblage. Being of
the country, it was vastly better behaved than would have been a
fashionable London congregation; but it certainly saw no reason why Mr.
Marmaduke Haward should not, during the anthem, turn his back upon altar,
minister, and clerk, and employ himself in recognizing with a smile and an
inclination of his head his friends and acquaintances. They smiled
back,--the gentlemen bowing slightly, the ladies making a sketch of a
curtsy. All were glad that Fair View house was open once more, and were
kindly disposed toward the master thereof.

The eyes of that gentleman were no longer for the gay parterre. Between it
and the door, in uncushioned pews or on rude benches, were to be found the
plainer sort of Darden's parishioners, and in this territory, that was
like a border of sober foliage to the flower-bed in front, he discovered
whom he sought.

Her gaze had been upon him since he passed the minister's pew, where she
stood between my Lady Squander's ex-waiting-woman and the branded
schoolmaster, but now their eyes came full together. She was dressed in
some coarse dark stuff, above which rose the brown pillar of her throat
and the elusive, singular beauty of her face. There was a flower in her
hai