.

On the Sunday all the household was astir early at their prayers, and
about half-past eight o'clock all, including the servants who had just
returned from the five o'clock service, assembled in the dining-room; the
noise of the feet of those returning from church had ceased on the
pavement of the square outside, and all was quiet except for the solemn
sound of the bells, as Dr. Carrington offered extempore prayer for all
who were fulfilling the Lord's ordinance on that day. And Isabel once
more felt her heart yearn to a God who seemed Love after all.

St. Sepulchre's was nearly full when they arrived. The mahogany table had
been brought down from the eastern wall to beneath the cupola, and stood
there with a large white cloth, descending almost to the ground on every
side; and a row of silver vessels, flat plates and tall new Communion
cups and flagons, shone upon it. Isabel buried her face in her hands, and
tried to withdraw into the solitude of her own soul; but the noise of the
feet coming and going, and the talking on all sides of her, were terribly
distracting. Presently four ministers entered and Isabel was startled to
see, as she raised her face at the sudden silence, that none of them wore
the prescribed surplice; for she had not been accustomed to the views of
the extreme Puritans to whom this was a remnant of Popery; an indifferent
thing indeed in itself, as they so often maintained; but far from
indifferent when it was imposed by authority. One entered the pulpit; the
other three took their places at the Holy Table; and after a metrical
Psalm sung in the Genevan fashion, the service began. At the proper place
the minister in the pulpit delivered an hour's sermon of the type to
which Isabel was being now introduced for the first time; but bearing
again and again on the point that the sacrament was a confession to the
world of faith in Christ; it was in no sense a sacrificial act towards
God, "as the Papists vainly taught"; this part of the sermon was spoiled,
to Isabel's ears at least, by a flood of disagreeable words poured out
against the popish doctrine; and the end of the sermon consisted of a
searching exhortation to those who contemplated sin, who bore malice, who
were in any way holding aloof from God, "to cast themselves mightily upon
the love of the Redeemer, bewailing their sinful lives, and purposing to
amend them." This act, wrought out in the silence of the soul even now
would transfer the sinn