"I suppose you didn't want to meet me!" said Cicely, showing all her white teeth in a flashing smile--"But there's no escape for it, you see,--here I am! I'm not such a rascal as I look, though! I've been playing accompaniments for the children!--go on singing, please!"-- and she addressed Miss Eden and Susie Prescott, who collecting their straying thoughts, began hesitatingly to resume the interrupted practice--"It's a nice little organ--very full and sweet. The church is perfectly exquisite! I come in every day to look at it except Sundays." "Why except Sundays?" asked Walden, amused. She gave him a quaint side-glance. "I'll tell you some day,--not now!"--she answered--"This is not the fitting time or place." She moved to the altar rails, and hung over them, looking at the alabaster sarcophagus "This thing has a perfect fascination for me!" she went on--"I can't bear not to know whose bones are inside! I wonder you haven't opened it." "It was not meant to be opened by those who closed it," said Walden, quietly. Cicely drooped her gipsy-bright eyes. "That's one for me!" she thought--"He's just like what Maryllia says he is,--very certain of his own mind, and not likely to move out of his own way." "I think," pursued Walden--"if you knew that someone very dear to you had been laid in that sarcophagus 'to eternal rest,' you would resent any disturbance of even the mere dust of what was once life,- -would you not?" "I might;" said Cicely dubiously--"But I have never had any 'someone very dear to me' except Maryllia Vancourt. And if she died, I should die too!" John was silent, but he looked at her with increased interest and kindliness. They walked out of the church together, and once in the open air, he became politely conventional. "And how is Miss Vancourt?" he enquired. "She is very well indeed,"--replied Cicely--"But tremendously busy just now with no end of household matters. The new agent, Mr. Stanways, is going over every yard of the Abbot's Manor property with her, and she is making any quantity of new rules. All the tenants' rents are to be reduced, for one thing--I know THAT. Then there are a lot of London people coming down to stay--big house- parties in relays,--I've helped write all the invitations. We shall be simply crowded at the end of June and all July. We mean to be very gay!" "And you will like that, of course?" queried Walden, indulgently, while conscious of a little sense of hurt and annoyance, though he knew not why. "Naturally!" and Cicely shrugged her shoulders carelessly, "Doesn't the Bible say 'the laughter of fools is like the crackling of thorns under a pot'? I love to set the pot down and hear the thorns crackle!" What a weird girl she was! He looked at her in mute amaze, and she smiled.