she stayed away, the more impossible it seemed that she should
ever again go. Now the impossible had become, not only
possible, but insistent. She must go to church and hear Sylvia
sing, no matter how ridiculous she appeared, no matter how
people talked and laughed at her.

Spencervale congregation had a mild sensation the next
afternoon. Just before the opening of service Old Lady Lloyd
walked up the aisle and sat down in the long-unoccupied Lloyd
pew, in front of the pulpit.

The Old Lady's very soul was writhing within her. She recalled
the reflection she had seen in her mirror before she left--the
old black silk in the mode of thirty years agone and the queer
little bonnet of shirred black satin. She thought how absurd
she must look in the eyes of her world.

As a matter of fact, she did not look in the least absurd.
Some women might have; but the Old Lady's stately distinction
of carriage and figure was so subtly commanding that it did
away with the consideration of garmenting altogether.

The Old Lady did not know this. But she did know that Mrs.
Kimball, the storekeeper's wife, presently rustled into the
next pew in the very latest fashion of fabric and mode; she
and Mrs. Kimball were the same age, and there had been a time
when the latter had been content to imitate Margaret Lloyd's
costumes at a humble distance. But the storekeeper had
proposed, and things were changed now; and there sat poor Old
Lady Lloyd, feeling the change bitterly, and half wishing she