The old church, which was designed by Sir Christopher Wren, was a bit of the seventeenth-century architecture, standing serene and undismayed in the nineteenth century, which in that part of Virginia yet lagged a hundred years behind the age. The church was overgrown with ivy, in which innumerable birds nested. In summer, when the diamond-paned windows were opened to let in the blue and limpid air, the voice of the clergyman was almost drowned in the splendid improvisations of the larks and blackbirds that thronged about the old, ivy-covered walls. The dead and gone vicars were buried under the main aisle, while in the churchyard outside were ancient tombstones covered with long inscriptions, moss-grown like everything else about the church. Usually, the place was as placid as peaceful Stoke Pogis at evening time, but on this April Sunday it was alive with people all throbbing with excitement and on fire with enthusiasm. Besides the great event which had stirred them all, the secession of Virginia, and the sending forth to war of all the men capable of bearing arms, was the local tragedy--Neville Tremaine turning traitor. The Tremaines were, taken all in all, the greatest people in the county. Their wealth was considerable, and their heritage of brains larger still. They had always given the county something to talk about and did not fail in this emergency. In the minds of the people assembled at Petworth Church on that Sunday morning was the species of curiosity, which is miscalled sympathy, to see how the Tremaines bore the first disgrace in their family. Colonel Tremaine was a stanch churchman, and Mrs. Tremaine never failed, rain or shine, on Sunday morning to walk into church upon Colonel Tremaine’s arm and to marshal her flock before her, a flock which for many years past had consisted only of Angela and Archie. There was no pretense in the community of sympathy with Angela, only inquisitiveness mixed with scorn and contempt. Many doubted whether she would have the assurance to present herself at church after her late disgraceful alliance, for so her marriage with Neville Tremaine was reckoned. But Angela, surmising this and with the hot courage of youth, would not remain away.