Luckily for his ungallant abstraction, they were speedily at the rectory, where a warm welcome from Mr. Brunton, Sibyl's guardian, and his family forced him to recover himself, and showed him that the story of his devotion to John Dornton had suffered nothing from Miss Eversleigh's recital. Distraught and anxious as he was, he could not resist the young girl's offer after luncheon to show him the church with the vault of the Dorntons and the tablet erected to John Dornton, and, later, the Hall, only two miles distant. But here Randolph hesitated. “I would rather not call on Sir William to-day,” he said. “You need not. He is over at the horse show at Fern Dyke, and won't be back till late. And if he has been forgathering with his boon companions he won't be very pleasant company.” “Sibyl!” said the rector in good-humored protest. “Oh, Mr. Trent has had a little of Cousin Bill's convivial manners before now,” said the young girl vivaciously, “and isn't shocked. But we can see the Hall from the park on our way to the station.” Even in his anxious preoccupation he could see that the church itself was a quaint and wonderful preservation of the past. For four centuries it had been sacred to the tombs of the Dorntons and their effigies in brass and marble, yet, as Randolph glanced at the stately sarcophagus of the unknown ticket of leave man, its complacent absurdity, combined with his nervousness, made him almost hysterical. Yet again, it seemed to him that something of the mystery and inviolability of the past now invested that degraded dust, and it would be an equal impiety to disturb it. Miss Eversleigh, again believing his agitation caused by the memory of his old patron, tactfully hurried him away. Yet it was a more bitter thought, I fear, that not only were his lips sealed to his charming companion on the subject in which they could sympathize, but his anxiety prevented him from availing himself of that interview to exchange the lighter confidences he had eagerly looked forward to. It seemed cruel that he was debarred this chance of knitting their friendship closer by another of those accidents that had brought them together. And he was aware that his gloomy abstraction was noticed by her. At first she drew herself up in a certain proud reserve, and then, perhaps, his own nervousness infecting her in turn, he was at last terrified to observe that, as she stood before the tomb, her clear gray eyes filled with tears. “Oh, please don't do that--THERE, Miss Eversleigh,” he burst out impulsively. “I was thinking of Cousin Jack,” she said, a little startled at his abruptness. “Sometimes it seems so strange that he is dead--I scarcely can believe it.” “I meant,” stammered Randolph, “that he is much happier--you know”--he grew almost hysterical again as he thought of the captain lying cheerfully in his bed at the hotel--“much happier than you or I,” he added bitterly; “that is--I mean, it grieves me so to see YOU grieve, you know.”