as could be judged by appearances, one old lady, in a pew close
to the place at which Amelius and Sally were standing, seemed to be the
only person present who was not favourably impressed by the ceremony.

"I call it disgraceful," the old lady remarked to a charming young
person seated next to her.

But the charming young person--being the legitimate product of the
present time--had no more sympathy with questions of sentiment than
a Hottentot. "How can you talk so, grandmamma!" she rejoined. "He has
twenty thousand a year--and that lucky girl will be mistress of the most
splendid house in London."

"I don't care," the old lady persisted; "it's not the less a disgrace
to everybody concerned in it. There is many a poor friendless creature,
driven by hunger to the streets, who has a better claim to our sympathy
than that shameless girl, selling herself in the house of God! I'll wait
for you in the carriage--I won't see any more of it."

Sally touched Amelius. "Take me out!" she whispered faintly.

He supposed that the heat in the church had been too much for her. "Are
you better now?" he asked, when they got into the open air.

She held fast by his arm. "Let's get farther away," she said. "That lady
is coming after us--I don't want her to see me again. I am one of the
creatures she talked about. Is the mark of the streets on me, after all
you have done to rub it out?"

The wild misery in her words presented another development in her
character which was entirely new to Amelius. "My dear child," he
remonstrated, "you distress me when you talk in that way. God knows the
life you are leading now."

But Sally's mind was still full of its own acutely painful sense of what
the lady had said. "I saw her," she burst out--"I saw her look at me
while she spoke!"

"And she thought you better worth looking at than the bride--and quite
right, too!" Amelius rejoined. "Come, come, Sally, be like yourself. You
don't want to make me unhappy about you, I am sure?"

He had taken the right way with her: she felt that simple appeal, and
asked his pardon with all the old charm in her manner and her voice.
For the moment, she was "Simple Sally" again. They walked on in silence.
When they had lost sight of the church, Amelius felt her hand beginning
to tremble on his arm. A mingled expression of tenderness and anxiety
showed itself in her blue eyes as they looked up at him. "I am thinking
of something else now," she said; "I am thin