lly merrily. "You speak as if you
didn't."

"I do, I assure you; but what is fame then?"

"Nothing at all," said Dolly.--"Just nothing at all; if you mean
people's admiration or applause given when we have gone beyond reach of
it."

"Beyond reach of it!" said Lawrence, echoing her words again. "Miss
Dolly, do you think it is no use to have one's name honoured by all the
world for ages after we have lived?"

"Very good for the world," said Dolly, with a spice of amusement
visible again.

"And nothing to the man?"

"What should it be to the man?" said Dolly, seriously enough now. "Mr.
St. Leger, when a man has got beyond this world with its little cares
and interests, there will be just one question for him,--whether he has
done what God put him here to do; and there will be just one word of
praise that he will care about,--the 'Well done!'--if he may have
it,--from those lips."

Dolly began quietly, but her colour flushed and her lip trembled as she
went on, and her eye sparkled through a sudden veil of tears. Lawrence
was silenced by admiration, and almost forgot what they were talking
about.

"But don't you think," he began again, as Dolly moved towards the
church door, "that the one thing--I mean, the praise here,--will be a
sort of guaranty for the praise there?"

"No," said Dolly. "That which is highly esteemed among men is
abomination in the sight of God--often, often." She pushed open the
door and went in. Only a little way in; there she stood still, arrested
by all the glory and the beauty that met her eye. The nobleness of
form, the wealth of colour, the multiplied richness of both, almost
bewildered her at first entering. Pillars, arches, vaultings, niches,
galleries, arcades--a wilderness of harmonised form; and every panel
and fair space filled with painting. She could not see details yet; she
was lost in the greatness of the whole.

"Whom has Mrs. Copley picked up?" asked Lawrence in an undertone. After
all, if the architect's posthumous fame had depended on him, it would
not have been worth much effort. Mrs. Copley, it may be mentioned, had
passed on while Dolly and St. Leger had stood talking outside; and now
she was seen in the distance the centre of a group of lively talkers;
at least there was one lady who was free to exercise her gifts in that
way. Lawrence and Dolly slowly advanced, even Dolly's attention taken
for a moment from the church by this extraordinary combination. Yes,
Mrs. Co