e most prosperous townspeople. Some of these were of the
old-fashioned, classic type, and others new examples of a national
architecture seeking to find itself,--white and yellow colonial,
roughcast modifications of the Shakespearian period, and nondescript
mixtures of cobblestones and shingles. Each was surrounded by trim lawns
and shrubbery. The church itself was set back from the street. It was of
bluish stone, and half covered with Virginia creeper.

At this point, had the opportunity for a secret retreat presented itself,
Honora would have embraced it, for until now she had not realized the
full extent of the ordeal. Had her arrival been heralded by sounding
trumpets, the sensation it caused could not have been greater. In her
Eden, the world had been forgotten; the hum of gossip beyond the gates
had not reached her. But now, as the horses approached the curb, their
restive feet clattering on the hard pavement, in the darkened interior of
the church she saw faces turned, and entering worshippers pausing in the
doorway. Something of what the event meant for Grenoble dawned upon her:
something, not all; but all that she could bear.

If it be true that there is no courage equal to that which a great love
begets in a woman, Honora's at that moment was sublime. Her cheeks
tingled, and her knees weakened under her as she ran the gantlet to the
church door, where she was met by a gentleman on whose face she read
astonishment unalloyed: amazement, perhaps, is not too strong a word for
the sensation it conveyed to her, and it occurred to her afterwards that
there was an element in it of outrage. It was a countenance peculiarly
adapted to such an expression--yellow, smooth-shaven, heavy-jowled, with
one drooping eye; and she needed not to be told that she had encountered,
at the outset, the very pillar of pillars. The frock coat, the heavy
watch chain, the square-toed boots, all combined to make a Presence.

An instinctive sense of drama amongst the onlookers seemed to create a
hush, as though these had been the unwilling witnesses to an approaching
collision and were awaiting the crash. The gentleman stood planted in the
inner doorway, his drooping eye fixed on hers.

"I am Mrs. Chiltern," she faltered.

He hesitated the fraction of an instant, but he somehow managed to make
it plain that the information was superfluous. He turned without a word
and marched majestically up the aisle before her to the fourth pew from
the