Christina was greatly relieved at first. It seemed to her that she was
clothed again. She looked back on what had passed. All would have been
right if she had not blushed, a silly fool! There was nothing to blush
at, if she HAD taken a sugar-bool. Mrs. MacTaggart, the elder's wife in
St. Enoch's, took them often. And if he had looked at her, what was
more natural than that a young gentleman should look at the best-dressed
girl in church? And at the same time, she knew far otherwise, she knew
there was nothing casual or ordinary in the look, and valued herself on
its memory like a decoration. Well, it was a blessing he had found
something else to look at! And presently she began to have other
thoughts. It was necessary, she fancied, that she should put herself
right by a repetition of the incident, better managed. If the wish was
father to the thought, she did not know or she would not recognise it.
It was simply as a manoeuvre of propriety, as something called for to
lessen the significance of what had gone before, that she should a
second time meet his eyes, and this time without blushing. And at the
memory of the blush, she blushed again, and became one general blush
burning from head to foot. Was ever anything so indelicate, so forward,
done by a girl before? And here she was, making an exhibition of
herself before the congregation about nothing! She stole a glance upon
her neighbours, and behold! they were steadily indifferent, and Clem had
gone to sleep. And still the one idea was becoming more and more potent
with her, that in common prudence she must look again before the service
ended. Something of the same sort was going forward in the mind of
Archie, as he struggled with the load of penitence. So it chanced that,
in the flutter of the moment when the last psalm was given out, and
Torrance was reading the verse, and the leaves of every psalm-book in
church were rustling under busy fingers, two stealthy glances were sent
out like antennae among the pews and on the indifferent and absorbed