sermon was long and tedious, but it was nearing its
end as they entered. At the close a stranger rose to speak in the body
of the Church, a tall stranger, who stood in the rays of the sun that
streamed through a lancet window behind him. His first words arrested
careless Joyce, though she paid small heed to preaching as a rule.

More than the words, something vaguely familiar in the tones of the
voice and the piercing gaze that fell upon her out of the flood of
sunlight, awoke in her the memory of that long ago Sunday of her
childhood, of her theft of the cherries, of her 'disremembering,' and
then of her mother's words, 'You, a Purefoy, to forget to be worthy of
your name.'

Alas! where was her Pure Faith now? The preacher seemed to be speaking
to her, to her alone: yet, strangely enough, to almost every heart in
that vast congregation the message went home. Did the building itself
rock and shake as if filled with power? The real Joyce was reached
again: the real Joyce, though hidden now under the weight of years of
self-pleasing, a heavier burden than any childish finery. Certainly
reached she was, though Lady Darcy preserved through it all her
cynical smile, and made sport of her friend's earnestness.
Nevertheless Lady Darcy went to France alone. Lady Danvers returned to
her husband--too much accustomed to be left alone, poor man, to have
been seriously disquieted by her absence. For the remainder of his
short life his wife did her best to tend him dutifully. But she did
leave him for an hour or two the day after her return, in order to go
and throw herself on her knees beside kind old Justice Hotham, and
confess to him how nearly she had deserted her post.

'And then what saved you?' enquired the wise old man, smoothing back
the wavy hair from the wilful, lovely face that looked up to him,
pleading for forgiveness.

'I think it was an angel,' said Joyce simply--'an angel or a spirit.
It rose up in Beverley Minster: it preached to us of the wonderful
things of God: words that burned. The whole building shook. Afterwards
it passed away.'

Little she guessed that George Fox, the Weaver's son, the Judge's
guest, seated in a deep recess of the long, panelled library, was
obliged to listen to every word she spoke. Joyce never knew that the
angel who had again enabled her to keep her 'Faith pure' was no
stranger to her. Neither did it occur to him, whose thoughts were ever
full of weightier matters than wilful woman'