To betray to a person who loves you that his gaze, his touch, his close vicinity is distasteful, what a dreadful thing to do--what a wound to his feelings, and his pride, and his fondness! If he would not do it; if he would keep a little farther off, and keep his arms by his side like other people, how much more pleasant; but to be so unsympathetic, so unfeeling, as to show him that you did not like what he meant in such great kindness! this was more than Margaret could do. As she sat back in the carriage and was carried along through the gray landscape, with a whiff of Mrs. Bellingham’s _mille-fleurs_ pervading the atmosphere, and a sea of crape all about her, and the voices of the others flowing on, Margaret, whom they thought so impassive, was turning over this question, with flushes of strange confusion and trouble. What would he say? what would he ask of her? what promises would she have to make, and pledges to give? To give him up was a thing that did not enter into her mind; she could not have done anything so cruel; but she looked forward to the next meeting with an alarm which was very vivid, while at the same time she was aware that it was quite inevitable that she must see him, and that in all likelihood she would do what he wanted her to do. This pervading consciousness confused Margaret much in respect to the morning’s service, and the people who came up to her and pressed her hand, and said things they meant to be kind. It was a little chapel, very like, as Mrs. Bellingham said indignantly, the chapels which the dissenters had in England; and to see all the common folk going to the big church with the steeple, to which they were called by all the discordancy of loudly clanging bells, while the carriages drew up before that little non-conforming tabernacle, was very offensive to all right-minded people. “Things must have been dreadfully mismanaged, Aubrey, at the time when all was settled,” Mrs. Bellingham said, very seriously; “for you see for yourself all the best people were there. One advantage is that it is much pleasanter sitting among a congregation that is _all_ ladies and gentlemen; but surely, surely, taking the most liberal view of it, it is more suitable that we should have the churches, and the common people be dissenters, as they are in England? I would not prevent them-- I would let them have their way; but naturally it is not we that should give place to them, but they to us.” “But, dearest Jean, we were all once--”