Swithin wanted to say to Viviette, 'Now I hope you are pleased; I have

conformed to your ideas of my duty, leaving my fitness out of

consideration;' but as he could only see her bonnet and forehead it was

not possible even to look the intelligence. He turned to his left hand,

where the organ stood, with Miss Tabitha Lark seated behind it.

It being now sermon-time the youthful blower had fallen asleep over the

handle of his bellows, and Tabitha pulled out her handkerchief intending

to flap him awake with it. With the handkerchief tumbled out a whole

family of unexpected articles: a silver thimble; a photograph; a little

purse; a scent-bottle; some loose halfpence; nine green gooseberries; a

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key. They rolled to Swithin's feet, and, passively obeying his first

instinct, he picked up as many of the articles as he could find, and

handed them to her amid the smiles of the neighbours.

Tabitha was half-dead with humiliation at such an event, happening under

the very eyes of the Bishop on this glorious occasion; she turned pale as

a sheet, and could hardly keep her seat. Fearing she might faint,

Swithin, who had genuinely sympathized, bent over and whispered

encouragingly, 'Don't mind it, Tabitha. Shall I take you out into the

air?' She declined his offer, and presently the sermon came to an end.

Swithin lingered behind the rest of the congregation sufficiently long to

see Lady Constantine, accompanied by her brother, the Bishop, the

Bishop's chaplain, Mr. Torkingham, and several other clergy and ladies,

enter to the grand luncheon by the door which admitted from the

churchyard to the lawn of Welland House; the whole group talking with a

vivacity all the more intense, as it seemed, from the recent two hours'

enforced repression of their social qualities within the adjoining

building.

The young man stood till he was left quite alone in the churchyard, and

then went slowly homeward over the hill, perhaps a trifle depressed at

the impossibility of being near Viviette in this her one day of gaiety,

and joining in the conversation of those who surrounded her.

Not that he felt much jealousy of her situation, as his wife, in

comparison with his own. He had so clearly understood from the beginning

that, in the event of marriage, their outward lives were to run on as

before, that to rebel now would have been unmanly in himself and cruel to

her, by adding to embarrassments that were great enough already. His

momentary doubt was of his own strength to achieve sufficiently high

things to render him, in relation to her, other than a patronized young

favourite, whom she had married at an immense sacrifice of position.




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