of Melville Falconer.

Joyce had felt ashamed and annoyed as she had never done before; and
when a neighbouring squire jogged past on horseback with his son, and
looked back with a smile at the highly-decorated figure in the back
seat, Joyce felt sure they were laughing at him! Why could not Melville
wear a short riding coat like Charlie Paget, and top-boots, and bear
himself like a country gentleman, instead of bringing down London
fashions into the heart of Somersetshire, and finding fault with
everything in his own home; bring his fine friends there without
warning, and behave as if he were indeed monarch of all he surveyed.

Joyce's sweet young face was shadowed with the awakening sense of
responsibility and the longing to do something, which might smooth the
rough places in her father's life, which her brother apparently made
without the slightest compunction.

As Joyce stood in the cathedral, not far from the north porch, her head
raised towards the belfry-tower, which the great inverted arches
support, a ray of sunshine entering at a window in the south transept
touched her figure, and illuminated it with a subdued and chastened
beauty. Her head was thrown back, and the high coal-scuttle or gipsy
bonnet did not hide the sweet face, which, when she had walked demurely
down the nave, had been hardly visible.

The little quaint figure was motionless, and the old verger turned twice
to look at it, with a strange and curious thrill of admiration.
Presently the cloister door opposite opened, and the Dean's swift
footsteps were heard approaching, with a regular pit-pat, on the floor
of the nave.

He, like the verger, was attracted by Joyce's attitude and the rapt
expression on her fair face.

"Why, it's Falconer's little girl!" he thought. "She is generally all
smiles and sunshine; now she looks like a nun."

As the Dean passed her, Joyce started. The brightest colour came to her
face, and she turned hastily towards the north porch.

The Dean, with old-fashioned and chivalrous courtesy, held the little
door, which was cut out of the big one for ordinary use, to let her
pass, and then he said:

"Miss Falconer, I think. I hope your good father is well. Is he in Wells
to-day?"

"Yes, sir," Joyce replied, bright smiles rippling over her face. "Yes,
sir; on magistrates' business."

"Ah, ah! I heard there was some bad case brought in from Mendip. The
good lady at Barley Wood will have to learn that much prating