Although certainly not a modern Chrysostom, he was an earnest, faithful, and enlightened man, full of persuasive fervour; and to the brief but interesting discourse he delivered--a discourse occasionally sprinkled with felicitous metaphors and rounded with several eloquent passages--Mr. Palma appeared to listen quite attentively. Once a half smile moved his mouth, as he wondered what his associates at the "Century" would think, if they could look in upon him there; otherwise his deportment was most gravely decorous. As he heard the monotonous rise and fall of the minister's tone, the words soon ceased to bear any meaning to ears that gradually caught other cadences long hushed; the voice of memory calling him from afar off, back to the dewy days of his early boyhood, when walking by his mother's side he had gone to church, and held her book as he now held Regina's. Since then, how many changes time had wrought! How holy seemed that distant, dim, church-going season! At long intervals, and upon especially august occasions he had now and then attended service in the elegant church where his pew-rent was regularly paid; but not until to-day had he been attacked by the swarming reminiscences of his childhood, all eagerly babbling of the long-forgotten things once learned-- "At that best academe, a mother's knee." From the benignant countenance of the earnest preacher his keen cold eyes began to wander, and after awhile rested upon the pale tender face at his side. Except that the lashes were heavy with moisture that no longer overflowed in drops, there was no trace of the shower that had fallen; for hers was one of those rare countenances, no more disfigured by weeping, than the pictured _Mater Dolorosa_ by the tear on her cheek. To-day in the subdued sadness that filled her heart, while she pondered the depressing news from India, her face seemed etherealized, singularly sublimated; and as he watched the expression of child-like innocence, the delicate tracery of nose and brows, the transparent purity of the complexion, and the unfathomable purplish blue of the eyes uplifted to the pulpit, a strange thrill never experienced before stirred his cold stony heart, and quickened the beat of his quiet, slow steady pulse. He had smiled and bowed before lovely women of various and bewitching types of beauty, had his abstract speculative ideal of feminine perfection, and had been feted, flattered, coaxed, baited, and welcomed to many shrines, whereon grace, wit, and wealth had lavished their choicest charms; but the carefully watched and well-regulated valvular machine he was pleased to designate his heart, had never as yet experienced a warmer sensation than that of mere critical admiration for classic contours, symmetrical figures, or voluptuous Paul Veronese colouring.