Madame Guise sat with Mr. and Mrs. Bent, occupying the post of honour at the top of the pew. After that, she strove to hide herself from Marie. In the square, crimson-curtained pew pertaining to Greylands' Rest, the only pew in the church with any pretensions to grandeur, sat the Master of Greylands and his family: his wife with a pinched face, for she had contrived to take cold; Harry, tall as himself, free and fascinating; Flora staring about with the plaster patches on her face; and Ethel Reene, devout, modest, lovely. They were all in black: the mourning worn for Mr. Peter Castlemaine. Their servants, also in mourning, occupied a pew behind that of the Grey Ladies. It might have been noticed that Mr. Castlemaine never once turned his head towards these ladies: he had never favoured them, and the step taken by his niece in joining their society had vexed him more materially than he would have liked to say. He had his private reasons for it: he had cause to wish those ladies backs turned on Greylands; but he had no power to urge their departure openly, or to send them by force away. Very dull was poor Charlotte Guise all that Sunday evening. She would not meet the little one on coming out of church, but mixed with the people to avoid it. Her heart yearned to give a fond word, a tender kiss; but so anxiously bent was she upon entering Greylands' Rest, that she shrank from anything that might impede it, or imperil the child's stay at the Nunnery. After taking tea in her parlour, she sat awhile in her own room above stairs indulging her sadness. It was sometimes worse than she knew how to bear. She might not give way to grief, distress, anguish in the presence of the world; that might have betrayed her to suspicion; but there were moments, when alone, that she yielded to it in all its bitterness. The fathomless sea, calm to-night, was spread out before her, grey and dull, for the rays of the setting sun had left it: did that sea cover the body of him whom she had loved more than life? To her left rose the Friar's Keep--she could almost catch a glimpse of its dark walls if she stretched her head well out at the casement; at any rate, she could see this end of the Grey Nunnery, and that was something. Did that Friar's Keep, with its dark tales, its superstitions stories--did that Keep contain the mystery? She fully believed it did. From the very first, the description of the building had seized on her mind, and left its dread there. It was there she must look for the traces of her husband's fate; perhaps even for himself. Yes, she believed that the grim walls covered him, not the heaving sea. "Oh Anthony! my ill-fated, wronged husband!" she cried, raising her clasped hands upwards in her distress and speaking through her blinding tears, "may the good God help me to bring your fate to light!"