ficial apathy was creeping over her, below which burnt a slow
fire of pain. But the greater the apathy, which expressed itself
outwardly in a sort of cheerful readiness to take things as they came,
the more delighted everybody appeared to be with the repentant sinner.
Her associates seemed to desire earnestly that she should go to church,
as they did, in her best bonnet----and why not? She would get a best
bonnet, as ridiculous as they pleased, and let Mr. Walker do his worst.
What did it matter? Who was the better or the worse for what she thought
or how she acted? What mattered it, whether she were consistent or not?
What mattered it if she seemed, by her actions, to proclaim her belief
in dogmas that meant nothing to her, except as interesting products of
the human mind? She had not enough faith to make it worth while to stand
alone.

Lord Engleton said he thought it right to go to church regularly, for
the sake of setting an example to the masses, a sentiment which always
used to afford Hadria more amusement than many intentional witticisms.

She went often to the later service, when the autumn twilight lay heavy
and sad upon the churchyard, and the peace of evening stole in through
the windows of the church. Then, as the sublime poetry of psalmist or
prophet rolled through the Norman arches, or the notes of the organ
stole out of the shadowed chancel, a spirit of repose would creep into
the heart of the listener, and the tired thoughts would take a more
rhythmic march. She felt nearer to her fellows, at such moments, than at
any other. Her heart went out to them, in wistful sympathy. They seemed
to be standing together then, one and all, at the threshold of the great
Mystery, and though they might be parted ever so widely by circumstance,
temperament, mental endowment, manner of thought, yet after all, they
were brethren and fellow sufferers; they shared the weakness, the
longing, the struggle of life; they all had affections, ambitions,
heart-breakings, sins, and victories; the differences were slight and
transient, in the presence of the vast unknown, the Ultimate Reality for
which they were all groping in the darkness. This sense of brotherhood
was strongest with regard to the poorer members of the congregation: the
labourers with their toil-stained hands and bent heads, the wives, the
weary mothers, their faces seamed with the ceaseless strain of
child-bearing, and hard work, and care and worry. In their premat