air of proprietorship not lost on
its object, who concealed a faint blush of annoyance by stooping to pick
up the book he had dropped at Lily's approach. The latter's eyes widened
charmingly and she broke into a light laugh.

"But I have no engagement with Mr. Selden! My engagement was to go to
church; and I'm afraid the omnibus has started without me. HAS it
started, do you know?"

She turned to Selden, who replied that he had heard it drive away some
time since.

"Ah, then I shall have to walk; I promised Hilda and Muriel to go to
church with them. It's too late to walk there, you say? Well, I shall
have the credit of trying, at any rate--and the advantage of escaping
part of the service. I'm not so sorry for myself, after all!"

And with a bright nod to the couple on whom she had intruded, Miss Bart
strolled through the glass doors and carried her rustling grace down the
long perspective of the garden walk.

She was taking her way churchward, but at no very quick pace; a fact not
lost on one of her observers, who stood in the doorway looking after her
with an air of puzzled amusement. The truth is that she was conscious of
a somewhat keen shock of disappointment. All her plans for the day had
been built on the assumption that it was to see her that Selden had come
to Bellomont. She had expected, when she came downstairs, to find him on
the watch for her; and she had found him, instead, in a situation which
might well denote that he had been on the watch for another lady. Was it
possible, after all, that he had come for Bertha Dorset? The latter had
acted on the assumption to the extent of appearing at an hour when she
never showed herself to ordinary mortals, and Lily, for the moment, saw
no way of putting her in the wrong. It did not occur to her that Selden
might have been actuated merely by the desire to spend a Sunday out of
town: women never learn to dispense with the sentimental motive in their
judgments of men. But Lily was not easily disconcerted; competition put
her on her mettle, and she reflected that Selden's coming, if it did not
declare him to be still in Mrs. Dorset's toils, showed him to be so
completely free from them that he was not afraid of her proximity.

These thoughts so engaged her that she fell into a gait hardly likely to
carry her to church before the sermon, and at length, having passed from
the gardens to the wood-path beyond, so far forgot her intention as to
sink into a rustic s