Over all the details of the village fane my eyes wandered from time to time, always to rest on the face of Estelle Cressingham or of Winifred Lloyd, who was beside me, and who on this day, as I had accompanied her, seemed to feel that she had me all to herself. We read off the same book, as we had done years before in the same pew and place; ever and anon our gloved fingers touched; I felt her silk dress rustling against me; her long lashes and snowy lids, with the soft pale beauty of her downcast face, and her sweetly curved mouth, were all most pleasing and attractive; but the _sense_ of Estelle's presence rendered me invulnerable to all but her; and my eyes could not but roam to where she stood or knelt by the side of burly Sir Madoc, her fine face downcast too in the soft light that stole between the deep mullions and twisted tracery of an ancient stained-glass window, her noble and equally pure profile half seen and half hidden by a short veil of black lace; her rounded chin and lips rich in colour, and beautiful in character as those of one of Greuze's loveliest masterpieces. There, too, were the rich brightness of her hair, and the proud grace that pervaded all her actions, and even her stillness. Thus, even when I did not look towards her, but in Winifred's face, or on the book we mutually held, and mechanically affected to read, a perception, a dreamy sense of Estelle's presence was about me, and I could not help reverting to our past season in London, and all that has been described by a writer as those "first sweet hours of communion, when strangers glide into friends; that hour which, either in friendship or in love, is as the bloom to the fruit, as the daybreak to the day, indefinable, magical, and fleeting;" the hours which saw me presented as a friend, and left me a lover. The day was intensely hot, and inside the old church, though some of the arched recesses and ancient tombs looked cool enough, there was a blaze of sunshine, that fell in hazy flakes or streams of coloured light athwart the bowed heads of the congregation. With heat and languor, there was also the buzz of insect life; and amid the monotonous tones of the preacher I loved to fancy him reading the marriage service for us--that is, for Estelle and myself--fancied it as an enthusiastic school-girl might have done; and yet how was it that, amid these conceits, the face and form of Winifred Lloyd, with her pretty hand in the tight straw-coloured kid glove, that touched mine, filled up the eye of the mind? Was I dreaming, or only about to sleep, like so many of the congregation--those toilers afield, those hardy hewers of wood and drawers of water, whose strong sinews, when unbraced, induced them to slumber now--the men especially, as the study of each other's toilets served to keep the female portion fully awake. When the clergyman prayed for the success of our arms in the strife that was to come, Winifred's dark eyes looked into mine for a moment, quick as