y august occasions he had now
and then attended service in the elegant church where his pew-rent
was regularly paid; but not until to-day had he been attacked by the
swarming reminiscences of his childhood, all eagerly babbling of the
long-forgotten things once learned--

"At that best academe, a mother's knee."

From the benignant countenance of the earnest preacher his keen cold
eyes began to wander, and after awhile rested upon the pale tender
face at his side.

Except that the lashes were heavy with moisture that no longer
overflowed in drops, there was no trace of the shower that had
fallen; for hers was one of those rare countenances, no more
disfigured by weeping, than the pictured _Mater Dolorosa_ by the tear
on her cheek.

To-day in the subdued sadness that filled her heart, while she
pondered the depressing news from India, her face seemed
etherealized, singularly sublimated; and as he watched the expression
of child-like innocence, the delicate tracery of nose and brows, the
transparent purity of the complexion, and the unfathomable purplish
blue of the eyes uplifted to the pulpit, a strange thrill never
experienced before stirred his cold stony heart, and quickened the
beat of his quiet, slow steady pulse.

He had smiled and bowed before lovely women of various and bewitching
types of beauty, had his abstract speculative ideal of feminine
perfection, and had been feted, flattered, coaxed, baited, and
welcomed to many shrines, whereon grace, wit, and wealth had lavished
their choicest charms; but the carefully watched and well-regulated
valvular machine he was pleased to designate his heart, had never as
yet experienced a warmer sensation than that of mere critical
admiration for classic contours, symmetrical figures, or voluptuous
Paul Veronese colouring.

Once only, early in his professional career, he had coolly,
dispassionately, sordidly, and with a hand as firm as Astraea's own,
held the matrimonial scales, and weighed the influence and preferment
that he could command by a politic and brilliant marriage, against
the advantages of freedom, and the glory of unassisted success and
advancement. For the lady herself--a bright, mirthful, pretty
brunette, who in contrast with his frigid nature seemed a gaudy
tropical bird fluttering around a stolid arctic auk--he had not even
a shadow of affection; and looked quite beyond the graceful lay
figure draped with his name to the lofty judicial em