tree and field and hill took
form. Man's creature, the little stout church in their midst, thrust
once more its plebeian outline against God's sky. Dim shapes moved
athwart the vacancy of the meadows. Voices called through the gray.
Close against the eaves a secret was twittered, was passed from beak to
beak. In the nursery below a little twitter of waking children broke the
stillness of the house.

But Hester did not hear it. She had fallen into a deep sleep in the low
window-seat, with her pale forehead against the pane; a sleep so deep
that even the alarum of the baby did not rouse her, nor the entrance of
Emma with the hot water.

* * * * *

"James," said Mrs. Gresley, an hour later; as she and her husband
returned through the white mist from early celebration, "Hester was not
there. I thought she had promised to come."

"She had."

There was a moment's silence.

"Perhaps she is not well," said Mr. Gresley, closing the church-yard
gate into the garden.

Mrs. Gresley's heart swelled with a sense of injustice. She had often
been unwell, often in feeble health before the birth of her children,
but had she ever pleaded ill-health as an excuse for absenting herself
from one of the many services which her husband held to be the
main-spring of the religious life?

"I do not think she can be very unwell. She is standing by the magnolia
now," she said, her lip quivering, and withdrawing her hand from her
husband's arm. She almost hated the slight, graceful figure, which was
not of her world, which was, as she thought, coming between her and her
husband.

"I will speak seriously to her," said Mr. Gresley, dejectedly, who
recollected that he had "spoken seriously" to Hester many times at his
wife's instigation without visible result. And as he went alone to meet
his sister he prayed earnestly that he might be given the right word to
say to her.

A ray of sunlight, faint as an echo, stole through the lingering mist,
parting it on either hand, and fell on Hester.

Hester, standing in a white gown under the veiled trees in a glade of
silver and trembling opal, which surely mortal foot had never trod,
seemed infinitely removed from him. Dimly he felt that she was at one
with this mysterious morning world, and that he, the owner, was an alien
and a trespasser in his own garden.

But a glimpse of his cucumber-frames in the background reassured him. He
advanced with a firmer step, as o