Church was nearly the only place where Lady Bell saw the world, if seeing the world it could be called, when she was shut securely into a high moth-eaten brown pew, with Squire Trevor seated by her side, and his servants ranged in rows behind her. However, Lady Bell’s wandering eyes contrived to peep over the board, to seek out and rest on a lady and gentleman in the only other pew which was on an equality with Squire Trevor’s, in the little parish church. The lady was only a few years older than Lady Bell, who thought the stranger very handsome. She had one of those striking profiles which readily catch the eye. Her face was long and oval, with clearly cut, distinguished nose and chin, the under part of the face projecting very slightly. The fine face belonged to a fine figure. The white cardinal cape and little chip hat and plume of feathers had more of an air of fashion than Lady Bell had noticed in such articles since her happy days with the best society at Lady Lucie Penruddock’s. The lady’s companion was young like herself, as Lady Bell remarked wistfully, though after the fashion of most of the young Englishmen of rank whom she had seen, his face lacked the freshness of youth. Still it was a pleasant prepossessing face in its suspicion of haggardness and exhaustion, and was in conjunction with a good person and the easy manner of a cultivated man of the world. The couple used the same Prayer-Book,—that is, he looked on hers when he used a book at all. She admonished him with a reproachful smile and shake of the head, when he yawned and closed his eyes during the service. He led her out of church when the congregation were dismissed, and handing her into a landau, drove off talking and laughing with her. They were a very pretty couple, surely near and intimate relations, and they quite took Lady Bell’s fancy. “Who are the handsome lady and gentleman?” she inquired on the first opportunity of the vicar’s wife. “I am sure I cannot tell,” answered the lady indifferently; “I desire to keep my eyes better employed than in staring round at the skin-deep beauty or fine feathers of my fellow-worms. I dare say you mean young Sundon, of Chevely, who has taken a wife like the rest of us, and brought her down on a visit to these parts. They say he has been a wild liver, and that the friends of madam, who was a great fortune, opposed the marriage. If so, they did not need to wish her ill, in order to keep her from thriving.” “She looks more like thriving than I who obeyed my friends,” thought Lady Bell. “Madam Sundon will want all her wits,” continued the speaker, “to make her man pick up, that he may not squander what is left of his means and her fortune. But I neither know nor care, for it is long since I have shaken hands with the world and its gossip.”