The people came in quietly by twos and threes, and took their places with the usual hushed and solemn air; then the throng thickened, and the pews began to fill; and then the bells rang more slowly, and there came a plaintive strain of melody from the organ, soft and subdued as a whisper. This swelled presently into a voluntary, and became a triumphant peal as the vestry door opened and the surpliced choir entered the chancel, two and two, the small boys first, and the rather clumsy-looking men bringing up the rear. After these followed Cyril Culverhouse, looking tall in his white raiment and crimson hood, and lastly the Vicar, a broad and dignified figure that seemed to have been intended for lawn sleeves and a bishop’s gown. A girl in one of the pews directly facing the chancel looked up from her open book as Cyril took his place in the reading desk, and then looked quickly down again, as if the sight were too terrible. That swift shy look, and sudden fall of the eyelids told a secret old as Time himself. Mr. Culverhouse was something more than the curate of Little Yafford to that one member of his congregation. She was a girl of striking appearance, richly but carelessly dressed in velvet and silk, with feathers in her bonnet, according to the fashion for that year made and provided. She had one of those brilliant Southern complexions--that rich mingling of carnation and palest olive--which are alone sufficient for good looks; but in her case this charm was heightened by the splendour of dark Italian eyes, and the warm brown of rippling hair. Her brow was broad but low, her nose nondescript, her lips firmly moulded, her teeth faultless, her eyebrows strongly marked, and of a darker brown than her hair. ‘I am always afraid of Trix’s eyebrows,’ Isabella Scratchell, the young lady’s bosom friend, used to say. ‘They remind me of thundery weather.’ Miss Scratchell was sitting next her friend in the Harefield pew to-night. She was a small slim person, distinguished by a pink and white complexion, and insignificant blunt features of the Dresden china type. There was a Scratchell pew in one of the aisles, but Beatrix liked to have her friend with her, and the Water House pew was in the more aristocratic and fashionable situation, advantages peculiarly agreeable to Isabella Scratchell. Mr. Harefield assisted at the Sunday morning service half a dozen times or so in a quarter, just often enough to escape the stigma of absolute indifference or infidelity. His handsome Italian wife had been a Roman Catholic, and there was a feeling among the more bigoted section of society in Little Yafford that Mr. Harefield was generally lax in his ideas, like the Romans when they began to import foreign gods, and that he would not have minded worshipping Isis and Osiris if those deities had come in his way.