ntrollable, and through the
closed lids the tears forced themselves rapidly, while she trembled
visibly, and seemed trying to swallow her sobs.

He moved closer to her, and the blue eyes opened and looked at him
with such pleading deprecating misery in their beautiful depths, that
he was touched, and involuntarily laid his ungloved hand on her
little bare fingers. Instantly they closed around it, twining like
soft tendrils about his, and unconsciously his clasp tightened.

All through the singing her tears fell unchecked, sliding over her
cheeks and upon her white dress, and when the congregation knelt in
prayer, Mr. Palma only leaned his head on the back of the pew in
front, and watched the figure bowed on her knees, close beside him,
crying silently, with her face in her hands.

When the prayer ended and the minister announced the hymn, she seemed
to have recovered her composure, and finding the page, offered her
pretty gilt hymn-book to her guardian. He accepted it mechanically,
and during the reading of the Scriptures that soon followed he slowly
turned over the leaves until he reached the title-page. On the
fly-leaf that fluttered over was written: "Regina Orme. With the love
and prayers of Douglass Lindsay."

Closing the book, he laid it in his lap, leaned back and folded his
arms over his chest.

The preacher read the sixty-third Psalm, and from it selected his
text: "My soul followeth hard after Thee."

Although certainly not a modern Chrysostom, he was an earnest,
faithful, and enlightened man, full of persuasive fervour; and to the
brief but interesting discourse he delivered--a discourse
occasionally sprinkled with felicitous metaphors and rounded with
several eloquent passages--Mr. Palma appeared to listen quite
attentively. Once a half smile moved his mouth, as he wondered what
his associates at the "Century" would think, if they could look in
upon him there; otherwise his deportment was most gravely decorous.
As he heard the monotonous rise and fall of the minister's tone, the
words soon ceased to bear any meaning to ears that gradually caught
other cadences long hushed; the voice of memory calling him from afar
off, back to the dewy days of his early boyhood, when walking by his
mother's side he had gone to church, and held her book as he now held
Regina's. Since then, how many changes time had wrought! How holy
seemed that distant, dim, church-going season!

At long intervals, and upon especiall