e was the only daughter of its richest
citizen. But the bold, luxuriant quality of her beauty, the original
and piquant freedom of her manners, the stories told in gossip about
her lawlessness at home, her intellectual attainments, and artistic
vagaries--these were even more exciting. The unlikelihood of her
marrying any one--at least any Octavian--was felt to add a certain
romantic zest to the image she made on the local perceptions. There was
no visible young Irishman at all approaching the social and financial
standard of the Maddens; it was taken for granted that a mixed marriage
was quite out of the question in this case. She seemed to have more
business about the church than even the priest. She was always playing
the organ, or drilling the choir, or decorating the altars with flowers,
or looking over the robes of the acolytes for rents and stains, or going
in or out of the pastorate. Clearly this was not the sort of girl to
take a Protestant husband.

The gossip of the town concerning her was, however, exclusively
Protestant. The Irish spoke of her, even among themselves, but seldom.
There was no occasion for them to pretend to like her: they did not know
her, except in the most distant and formal fashion. Even the members of
the choir, of both sexes, had the sense of being held away from her
at haughty arm's length. No single parishioner dreamed of calling her
friend. But when they referred to her, it was always with a cautious and
respectful reticence. For one thing, she was the daughter of their chief
man, the man they most esteemed and loved. For another, reservations
they may have had in their souls about her touched close upon a
delicately sore spot. It could not escape their notice that their
Protestant neighbors were watching her with vigilant curiosity, and with
a certain tendency to wink when her name came into conversation along
with that of Father Forbes. It had never yet got beyond a tendency--the
barest fluttering suggestion of a tempted eyelid--but the whole Irish
population of the place felt themselves to be waiting, with clenched
fists but sinking hearts, for the wink itself.

The Rev. Theron Ware had not caught even the faintest hint of these
overtures to suspicion.

When he had entered the huge, dark, cool vault of the church, he could
see nothing at first but a faint light up over the gallery, far at the
other end. Then, little by little, his surroundings shaped themselves
out of the gloom.