The beauty and rapture of this devotion made me hold my breath, and feel as if I were profaning it. "Get away, you low intruder," said my better self to me. But it is all very well to talk. It was out of my power to go away. Under this spell I stood, until that gentle worshipper arose with a bend of her graceful neck, and gathered her pale grey robe around her. It was not such a dress as English ladies according to the fashion of the moment wear, with pumpkin sleeves, or with wens upon their shoulders, and puckers, and gathers, and frizzles and scollops, in a mangle of angles and zig-zags. What it was made of is more than I can say; I only know that it was beautiful; drawn in at the waist with a narrow belt, and following rather than trying to lead the harmony of the living form. But one thing caught my attention even so, and that was the flash of a bright red cross on the delicate curve of the bosom. It appeared to me that tears were sparkling under the fringe of large dark eyes, as the lonely maiden glanced around, while preparing for departure. Then to my surprise--if anything could surprise me further--with a rapid movement she laid bare a gleaming shoulder, and set upon it the tip of a long straight finger. Her face was partly obscured to me by the bend of her arm, but I fancied that she smiled, and was opening her lips to pronounce some words, when suddenly that horse Old Joe, who had been doing his best to lessen the burden of his maintenance, gave vent to a snort of approbation, not of the fair sight across the water--for that was hidden by bushes from him--but at the juiciness of his graze. My guilty conscience made me start, for I fully expected to be found out in a thing I had never done before; and I felt ashamed to look again, till I knew there was no suspicion. Then a breath of wind turned up a leaf; and who could help glancing under it? I saw that the beautiful and mysterious damsel had taken some little alarm at the grunt of the greedy quadruped. From the foot of the old chapel-window she was taking something white like a crucifix--though I could not be certain about that; meanwhile she had placed on her head that strange affair which I had seen lying on the ground. To me it looked like an octagonal hat, with a long veil of gauze descending from it, resembling nothing that I had ever seen on a lady's head, to the best of my remembrance; although in bright fact they wear such strange things, and trim them anew so wondrously, that no man must be positive. Whatever it was, it looked very sweet--as the ladies themselves express it--but I grieved that I could see her face no more.