so dull and stupid. But
Mary set it all down to his displeasure at her.

She was so busy with far other thoughts at church that she did not
notice the strange halting way in which her father read the
service--sometimes lisping, sometimes trying twice before he could
pronounce a word at all. But, after church, Miss Thornton noticed it to
her; and she also noticed, as they stood waiting for him under the
lychgate, that he passed through the crowd of neighbours, who stood as
usual round the porch to receive him, without a word, merely raising
his hat in salutation. Conduct so strange that Miss Thornton began to
cry, and said she was sure her brother was very ill. But Mary said it
was because he was still angry with her that he spoke to no one, and
that when he had forgotten his cause of offence he would be the same
again.

At lunch, the Vicar drank several glasses of wine, which seemed to do
him good; and by the time he had, to Miss Thornton's great
astonishment, drunk half a bottle, he was quite himself again. Mary was
all this time in her room, and the Vicar asked for her. But Miss
Thornton said she was not very well.

"Oh, I remember," said the Vicar, "I quarrelled with her last night. I
was quite in the wrong, but, my dear sister, all yesterday and to-day I
have been so nervous, I have not known what I said or did. I shall keep
myself up to the afternoon service with wine, and to-morrow we will see
the Doctor. Don't tell Mary I am ill. She will think she is the cause,
poor girl."

Afternoon service went off well enough. When Mary heard his old
familiar voice strong, clear, and harmonious, filling the aisles and
chapels of the beautiful old church, she was quite re-assured. He
seemed stronger than usual even, and never did the congregation listen
to a nobler or better sermon from his lips, than the one they heard
that spring afternoon; the last, alas, they ever had from their kind
old Vicar.

Mary could not listen to it. The old innocent interest she used to have
in her father's success in preaching was gone. As of old, sitting
beneath the carved oak screen, she heard the sweet simple harmony of
the evening hymn roll up, and die in pleasant echoes among the lofty
arches overhead. As of old, she could see through the rich traceried
windows the moor sloping far away, calm and peaceful, bathed in a misty
halo of afternoon sunshine. All these familiar sights and sounds were
the same, but she herself was different. Sh