ody,
concentrated man, whose whole life is burdened with an unsavory mystery.
What a power, too, he possesses over them; even that untractable Pussy
was calmed, charmed into submission by a word, a glance. Yet children
and dogs, they say, have keenest instincts!

While she still wonders, Fabian lifts his eyes and meets hers, and as
though drawn by some magnetic influence each towards the other, though
sorely against their wills, they gaze into each other's faces for more
time than they care to calculate afterwards, until at last Fabian (who
is the first to recover himself) lets his glance fall, and so the spell
is broken.

After this, Portia sits quiet and thoughtful until the last Amen is
uttered, and they all go eagerly, but with a meritorious attempt at
regret, into the open air once more.

CHAPTER VIII.

"None here are happy, but the very fool,
Or very wise: I am not fool enough
To smile in vanities, and hug a shadow;
Nor have I wisdom to elaborate
An artificial happiness from pains."--YOUNG.

THEY are all standing in the porch, saying "How d'ye do" to half a dozen
of their neighbors, and being introduced to the dark young man in the
Fens pew. He is a very handsome young man, and very light-hearted
apparently, and looks very frequently at Miss Blount, who smiles at him
very graciously, and tells him he must "really come up to luncheon at
the Court, or Uncle Christopher will be _so_ disappointed. _Any_ friend
of Roger's"--and so on.

"Portia," says Sir Christopher, suddenly--when Stephen Gower has
expressed his extreme pleasure at the thought of lunching at the Court,
always with his dark eyes fixed curiously upon Dulce--"Come with me; I
want to show you your poor mother's last resting-place."

"Ah! yes; I shall like to see that," says Portia, tenderly, though the
dead mother is only a bare memory to her. "Yes, take me to see it."

They separate from the others, and go around an angle of the old church,
and past an ivied corner, and so come to the quiet spot where stands the
vault of the Blounts.

"It was too far to send her to the Vibarts' burying-place," says Sir
Christopher; "at least we tried to think so, because we tried to keep
her with _us_. And your father was dead. And at the very last, she
murmured something about being laid beside her mother; poor, dear girl!"
To Sir Christopher, Portia's mother has always been a girl, and a poor
so