Moreover, as has been said, above all things he desired to please Mary, the lovely, amiable woman who had complimented him with her unvarying affection; and—when he went astray—who, with scarcely a reproach, had led him back into its gentle fold. Least of all, therefore, was it his will to flaunt before her eyes the spectre from a past which she wished to forget, or even to let her guess that such a past still permeated his present. Therefore, on this subject settled the silence of the dead, till at length Mary, observant as she was, became well-nigh convinced that Stella Fregelius was forgotten, and that her fantastic promises were disproved. Yet no mistake could have been more profound. It was Morris’s habit, whenever he could secure an evening to himself, which was not very often, to walk to the Rectory and smoke his pipe in the company of Mr. Fregelius. Had Mary chanced to be invisibly present, or to peruse a stenographic report of what passed at one of these evening calls—whereof, for reasons which she suppressed, she did not entirely approve—she might have found sufficient cause to vary her opinion. On these occasions ostensibly Morris went to talk about parish affairs, and, indeed, to a certain extent he did talk about them. For instance, Stella who had been so fond of music, once described to him the organ which she would like to have in the fine old parish church of Monksland. Now that renovated instrument stood there, and was the admiration of the country-side, as it well might be in view of the fact that it had cost over four thousand pounds. Again, Mr. Fregelius wished to erect a monument to his daughter, which, as her body never had been found, could properly be placed in the chancel of the church. Morris entered heartily into the idea and undertook to spend the hundred pounds which the old gentleman had saved for this purpose on his account and to the best advantage. In effect he did spend it to excellent advantage, as Mr. Fregelius admitted when the monument arrived. It was a lovely thing, executed by one of the first sculptors of the day, in white marble upon a black stone bed, and represented the mortal shape of Stella. There she lay to the very life, wrapped in a white robe, portrayed as a sleeper awakening from the last sleep of death, her eyes wide and wondering, and on her face that rapt look which Morris had caught in his sketch of her, singing in the chapel. At the edge of the base of this remarkable effigy, set flush on the black marble in letters of plain copper was her name—Stella Fregelius—with the date of her death. On one side appeared the text that she had quoted, “O death, where is thy sting?” and on the other its continuation, “O grave, where is thy victory?” and at the foot part of a verse from the forty-second psalm: “Deep calleth unto deep. . . . All Thy waves and storms have gone over me.”