sleep at home; and it is so hot in that pew, with all that
red cloth!"

"My love!" says Dulcia Waverley, scandalized.

"Lady Waverley don't go to sleep!" cries the Babe, in his terribly clear
little voice. "She was writing in her hymn-book and showing it to papa."

No one appears to hear this indiscreet remark except Dodo, who laughs
somewhat rudely.

"I was trying to remember the hymn of Faber's 'Longing for God,'" says
Lady Waverley, who is never known to be at a loss. "The last verse
escapes me. Can any one recall it? It is so lamentable that sectarianism
prevents those hymns from being used in Protestant churches."

But no one there present is religious enough or poetic enough to help
her to the missing lines.

"There is so little religious feeling anywhere in England," she remarks,
with a sigh.

"It's the confounded levelling that destroys it," says Usk, echoing the
sigh.

"They speak of Faber," says Madame Sabaroff. "The most beautiful and
touching of all his verses are those which express the universal sorrow
of the world."

And in her low, grave, melodious voice she repeats a few of the lines of
the poem:

"The sea, unmated creature, tired and lone,
Makes on its desolate sands eternal moan.
Lakes on the calmest days are ever throbbing
Upon their pebbly shores with petulant sobbing.

"The beasts of burden linger on their way
Like slaves, who will not speak when they obey;
Their eyes, whene'er their looks to us they raise,
With something of reproachful patience gaze.

"Labor itself is but a sorrowful song,
The protest of the weak against the strong;
Over rough waters, and in obstinate fields,
And from dark mines, the same sad sound it yields."

She is addressing Brandolin as she recites them; they are a little
behind the others.

He does not reply, but looks at her with an expression in his eyes which
astonishes and troubles her. He is thinking, as the music of her tones
stirs his innermost soul, that he can believe no evil of her, will
believe none,--no, though the very angels of heaven were to cry out
against her.

CHAPTER XII.

"Where were you all this morning?" asks Lady Usk of her cousin, after
luncheon.

"I never get up early," returns Gervase. "You know that."

"Brandolin was in the home wood with Madame Sabaroff as we returned from
church," remarks Dolly Usk. "They were together under a larch-tree. They
looked as if they we