oyous thing to him when he first heard of it, full
of confidence in her favour. But the fact of her having again become
the arbitrator, though it had made acceptance of his plans all the more
probable, made refusal of them, should it happen, all the more crushing.
He could have conceived himself favoured by Paula as her lover, even had
the committee decided in favour of Havill as her architect. But not to
be chosen as architect now was to be rejected in both kinds.

IV.

It was the Sunday following the funeral of Mrs. Havill, news of whose
death had been so unexpectedly brought to her husband at the moment of
his exit from Stancy Castle. The minister, as was his custom, improved
the occasion by a couple of sermons on the uncertainty of life. One
was preached in the morning in the old chapel of Markton; the second at
evening service in the rural chapel near Stancy Castle, built by Paula's
father, which bore to the first somewhat the relation of an episcopal
chapel-of-ease to the mother church.

The unscreened lights blazed through the plate-glass windows of the
smaller building and outshone the steely stars of the early night, just
as they had done when Somerset was attracted by their glare four months
before. The fervid minister's rhetoric equalled its force on that more
romantic occasion: but Paula was not there. She was not a frequent
attendant now at her father's votive building. The mysterious tank,
whose dark waters had so repelled her at the last moment, was boarded
over: a table stood on its centre, with an open quarto Bible upon it,
behind which Havill, in a new suit of black, sat in a large chair.
Havill held the office of deacon: and he had mechanically taken the
deacon's seat as usual to-night, in the face of the congregation, and
under the nose of Mr. Woodwell.

Mr. Woodwell was always glad of an opportunity. He was gifted with a
burning natural eloquence, which, though perhaps a little too freely
employed in exciting the 'Wertherism of the uncultivated,' had in it
genuine power. He was a master of that oratory which no limitation
of knowledge can repress, and which no training can impart. The
neighbouring rector could eclipse Woodwell's scholarship, and the
freethinker at the corner shop in Markton could demolish his logic; but
the Baptist could do in five minutes what neither of these had done in a
lifetime; he could move some of the hardest of men to tears.

Thus it happened that, when the sermon