ll the time about his defection? The church singers came
up to the Hall, and the drawing-room door was set open for the party
to listen to them; grandpapa and Uncle Geoffrey went out to have a talk
with them, and so passed the space till tea-time; to say nothing of the
many little troops of young small voices outside the windows, to whom
Mrs. Langford's plum buns, and Mr. Geoffrey's sixpences, were a very
enjoyable part of the Christmas festivities.

CHAPTER VII.

The double feast of Sunday and Christmas-day dawned upon Henrietta with
many anxieties for her mother, to whom the first going to church must
be so great a trial. Would that she could, as of old, be at her side the
whole day! but this privilege, unrecked of at Rocksand, was no longer
hers. She had to walk to church with grandmamma and the rest of the
party, while Mrs. Frederick Langford was driven in the open carriage
by old Mr. Langford, and she was obliged to comfort herself with
recollecting that no companion ever suited her better than grandpapa. It
was a sight to be remembered when she came into church, leaning upon his
arm, her sweet expression of peace and resignation, making her even more
lovely than when last she entered there--her face in all its early bloom
of youthful beauty, and radiant with innocent happiness.

But Henrietta knew not how to appreciate that "peace which passeth all
understanding;" and all that she saw was the glistening of tears in her
eyes, and the heaving of her bosom, as she knelt down in her place; and
she thought that if she had calculated all that she would have to go
through, and all her own anxieties for her, she should never have urged
their removal. She viewed it, however, as a matter of expediency rather
than of duty, and her feelings were not in the only right and wholesome
channel. As on the former occasion, Knight Sutton Church seemed to her
more full of her father's presence than of any other, so now, throughout
the service, she was chiefly occupied with watching her mother; and
entirely by the force of her own imagination, she contrived to work
herself into a state of nervous apprehension, only equalled by her
mamma's own anxieties for Fred.

Neither she nor any of her young cousins were yet confirmed, so they all
left the church together. What would she not have given to be able to
talk her fears over with either Frederick or Beatrice, and be assured
by them that her mamma had borne it very well, and