prize bull-dog, or a pretty wife.

Under the circumstances, therefore, it was perfectly natural that they
should enjoy themselves very thoroughly, and though towards the end
Garthorne began to get a little bored, and to think rather longingly of
his yacht on the Solent and his grouse moor in Scotland, Enid, with her
youth and beauty and perfect constitution, enjoyed every hour and every
minute of her waking life. Society had no very distinguished lion to
fall down and worship that season, and so, towards the end, things were
getting a little slow, and people were thinking seriously of escaping
from the heat and dust of London, when the world of wealth and fashion
was suddenly thrilled into fresh life by an absolutely new sensation.

CHAPTER XVI.

One Sunday morning, about the middle of June, the large and fashionable
congregation which filled the church of St. Chrysostom, South
Kensington, a church which will be recognised as one of the very
"highest" in London, and which, to use a not altogether unsuitable term,
"draws" all the year round by reason of the splendour of its ritual, as
well as the simple earnest eloquence of its clergy, was startled by the
preaching of such a sermon as no member of it had ever heard before.

The preacher for the morning was announced to be the Rev. Father Vane, a
name which meant nothing to more than about half a dozen members of the
congregation, but which every man and woman in the church had some cause
to remember by the time the service was over.

Father Baldwin, as the vicar of St. Chrysostom's was familiarly known,
was a very old friend of Father Philip's, and Vane's appearance as
preacher that morning was the result of certain correspondence which had
taken place between them, and of several long and earnest conversations
which he had had with Vane himself.

The moment that Vane appeared in the pulpit, that strange rustling sound
which always betokens an access of sensation in a church, became
distinctly audible from the side where the women sat. As he stood there
in cassock, cotta and white, gold-embroidered stole, he looked, as many
a maid, and matron too, said afterwards, almost too beautiful to be
human. Both as boy and man he had always been strikingly handsome, but
the long weeks and months of prayer and fasting, and the constant
struggle of the soul against the flesh, had refined and spiritualised
him. To speak of an everyday man of the world, however good-looki