denunciation, all the more vigorous perhaps from the
limitation of mind and language under which the speaker
laboured. Yet, fool that he had been made by the candidate,
there was nothing acrid in his attack. Genuine flashes of
rhetorical fire were occasionally struck by that plain and
simple man, who knew what straightforward conduct was, and who
did not know the illimitable caprice of a woman's mind.

At this moment there was not in the whole chapel a person
whose imagination was not centred on what was invisibly taking
place within the vestry. The thunder of the minister's
eloquence echoed, of course, through the weak sister's cavern
of retreat no less than round the public assembly. What she
was doing inside there--whether listening contritely, or
haughtily hastening to put on her things and get away from the
chapel and all it contained--was obviously the thought of each
member. What changes were tracing themselves upon that lovely
face: did it rise to phases of Raffaelesque resignation or
sink so low as to flush and frown? was Somerset's inquiry; and
a half-explanation occurred when, during the discourse, the
door which had been ajar was gently pushed to.

Looking on as a stranger it seemed to him more than probable
that this young woman's power of persistence in her unexpected
repugnance to the rite was strengthened by wealth and position
of some sort, and was not the unassisted gift of nature. The
manner of her arrival, and her dignified bearing before the
assembly, strengthened the belief. A woman who did not feel
something extraneous to her mental self to fall back upon
would be so far overawed by the people and the crisis as not