where she sat
down and viewed the whole empty length, east and west. The semi-Norman
arches of the nave, with their multitudinous notchings, were still
visible by the light from the tower window, but the lower portion of the
building was in obscurity, except where the feeble glimmer from the
candle of the organist spread a glow-worm radiance around. The player,
who was Miss Tabitha Lark, continued without intermission to produce her
wandering sounds, unconscious of any one's presence except that of the
youthful blower at her side.

The rays from the organist's candle illuminated but one small fragment of
the chancel outside the precincts of the instrument, and that was the
portion of the eastern wall whereon the ten commandments were inscribed.
The gilt letters shone sternly into Lady Constantine's eyes; and she,
being as impressionable as a turtle-dove, watched a certain one of those
commandments on the second table, till its thunder broke her spirit with
blank contrition.

She knelt down, and did her utmost to eradicate those impulses towards
St. Cleeve which were inconsistent with her position as the wife of an
absent man, though not unnatural in her as his victim.

She knelt till she seemed scarcely to belong to the time she lived in,
which lost the magnitude that the nearness of its perspective lent it on
ordinary occasions, and took its actual rank in the long line of other
centuries. Having once got out of herself, seen herself from afar off,
she was calmer, and went on to register a magnanimous vow. She would
look about for some maiden fit and likely to make St. Cleeve happy; and
this girl she would endow with what money she could afford, that the
natural result of their apposition should do him no worldly harm. The
interest of her, Lady Constantine's, life should be in watching the
development of love between Swithin and the ideal maiden. The very
painfulness of the scheme to her susceptible heart made it pleasing to
her conscience; and she wondered that she had not before this time
thought of a stratagem which united the possibility of benefiting the
astronomer with the advantage of guarding against peril to both Swithin
and herself. By providing for him a suitable helpmate she would preclude
the dangerous awakening in him of sentiments reciprocating her own.

Arrived at a point of exquisite misery through this heroic intention,
Lady Constantine's tears moistened the books upon which her forehead was