After the striking of the quarter, the church bell began to ring, with a
gentle, yet insistent note which gradually filled the hollows of the
village, and echoed along the side of the down. Once or twice the sound
was effaced by the rush and roar of a distant train; and once the call
of an owl from a wood, a call melancholy and prolonged, was raised as
though in rivalry. But the bell held Diana's strained ear throughout its
course, till its mild clangor passed into the deeper note of the clock
striking the hour, and then all sounds alike died into a profound yet
listening silence.

"Eight o'clock! That was for early service," she thought; and there
flashed into her mind an image of the old parish church, dimly lit for
the Christmas Eucharist, its walls and pillars decorated with ivy and
holly, yet austere and cold through all its adornings, with its bare
walls and pale windows. She shivered a little, for her youth had been
accustomed to churches all color and lights and furnishings--churches of
another type and faith. But instantly some warm leaping instinct met the
shrinking, and overpowered it. She smote her hands together.

"England!--England!--my own, own country!"

She dropped upon the window-seat half laughing, yet the tears in her
eyes. And there, with her face pressed against the glass, she waited
while the dawn stole upon the night, while in the park the trees emerged
upon the grass white with rime, while on the face of the down thickets
and paths became slowly visible, while the first wreaths of smoke began
to curl and hover in the frosty air.

Suddenly, on a path which climbed the hill-side till it was lost in the