APTER XXVIII.

THE SECRET IS WHISPERED.

The Reverend Chauncy Fairweather's congregation was not large, but
select. The lines of social cleavage run through religious creeds as
if they were of a piece with position and fortune. It is expected of
persons of a certain breeding, in some parts of New England, that they
shall be either Episcopalians or Unitarians. The mansion-house gentry of
Rockland were pretty fairly divided between the little chapel with the
stained window and the trained rector, and the meeting-house where the
Reverend Mr. Fairweather officiated.

It was in the latter that Dudley Venner worshipped, when he attended
service anywhere,--which depended very much on the caprice of Elsie. He
saw plainly enough that a generous and liberally cultivated nature might
find a refuge and congenial souls in either of these two persuasions,
but he objected to some points of the formal creed of the older church,
and especially to the mechanism which renders it hard to get free
from its outworn and offensive formulae,--remembering how Archbishop
Tillotson wished in vain that it could be "well rid of" the Athanasian
Creed. This, and the fact that the meeting-house was nearer than the
chapel, determined him, when the new, rector, who was not quite up to
his mark in education, was appointed, to take a pew in the "liberal"
worshippers' edifice.

Elsie was very uncertain in her feeling about going to church. In
summer, she loved rather to stroll over The Mountain on Sundays. There
was even a story, that she had one of the caves before mentioned fitted
up as an oratory, and that she had her own wild way of worshipping the
God whom she sought in the dark chasms of the dreaded cliffs. Mere
fables, doubtless; but they showed the common belief, that Elsie, with
all her strange and dangerous elements of character, had yet strong
religions feeling mingled with them. The hymn-book which Dick had found,
in his midnight invasion of her chamber, opened to favorite hymns,
especially some of the Methodist and Quietist character. Many had
noticed, that certain tunes, as sung by the choir, seemed to impress her
deeply; and some said, that at such times her whole expression would
change, and her stormy look would soften so as to remind them of her
poor, sweet mother.

On the Sunday morning after the talk recorded in the last chapter, Elsie
made herself ready to go to meeting. She was dressed much as usual,
excepting that she wore a t