The Vicarage party were amongst the first arrivals. There were only the charity children in the gallery, and a few gaffers and goodies in the free seats. The gentry dropped in slowly. Here was Mr. Sampson, the lawyer, looking his sandiest, accompanied by Miss Sampson, in a distinctly new bonnet. Here was Lady Barker, short and fat and puffy, in an ancient velvet mantle, bordered with brown fur, like a common councillor’s cloak on Lord Mayor’s Day, and with a bonnet that reached the climax of dowdiness--but when one is Lady Barker, and has lived in the same house for five-and-thirty years, it matters very little what one wears. Here came the Pugsleys, the retired ironmonger and his wife, from Beechampton, Mrs. Pugsley positively gorgeous in velvet and sable, and with a bird of many colours in her bonnet. Next arrived Mrs. Daracott, the rich widow, whose husband was the largest tenant farmer in the district, and who looked as if all Hazlehurst belonged to her; and here, after a sprinkling of nobodies, came John Treverton and his wife. The Vicar gave out a New Year’s hymn two minutes after this last arrival, and the congregation rose. ‘The man is marvellously changed,’ George Gerard said to himself as he stood face to face with John Treverton, ‘but he is the man I knew in Cibber Street, and no other.’ Yes, it was Jack Chicot. Happiness had given new life and colour to the face, prosperity had softened the harshness of its outline. The hollow cheeks had filled, the haggard eyes had recovered the glory and gladness of youth. But the man was there--the same man in whose face Gerard had looked a year and a half ago, reading the secret of his loveless marriage. Did he look like an undetected murderer? Did he look like a man tormented by remorse, weighed down with the burden of a guilty secret? Assuredly not. He had the straight outlook of one whose conscience is clear, whose heart is free from guile. If he were verily guilty, he must be the prince of hypocrites. His wife was at his side, and George Gerard looked at her with painful interest. What a lovely, trustful face, radiant with innocence and contentment! And was this guileless creature to be made wretched by the knowledge of her husband’s deceit? Was her heart to be broken in order that John Treverton should be punished? Edward Clare had said that it was for her sake he wanted to know the truth about her husband, it was that she might be rescued from a degrading alliance, protected from a man who was at heart a villain. George Gerard watched the husband and wife at intervals during the service. He could see nothing but placid content, a mind at ease, in the face of John Treverton. The idea of this freedom from care on the part of him who had been La Chicot’s husband embittered Gerard.