the dreary ceremony, he wondered whether the larks might not have
had the best of it in the God praising that had been going on for
two slow paced hours. Yet, having been so long used to the sort of
thing, he did not mind it half so much as his friend Malcolm, who
found the Sunday observances an unspeakable weariness to both flesh
and spirit.

On the present occasion, however, Malcolm did not find the said
observances dreary, for he observed nothing but the vision which
radiated from the dusk of the small gallery forming Lossie pew,
directly opposite the Norman canopy and stone crusader. Unconventional,
careless girl as Lady Florimel had hitherto shown herself to him,
he saw her sit that morning like the proudest of her race, alone,
and, to all appearance, unaware of a single other person's being
in the church besides herself. She manifested no interest in what
was going on, nor indeed felt any--how could she? never parted
her lips to sing; sat during the prayer; and throughout the
sermon seemed to Malcolm not once to move her eyes from the carved
crusader. When all was over, she still sat motionless--sat until
the last old woman had hobbled out. Then she rose, walked slowly from
the gloom of the church, flashed into the glow of the churchyard,
gleamed across it to a private door in the wall, which a servant
held for her, and vanished. If a moment after, the notes of a merry
song invaded the ears of those who yet lingered, who could dare
suspect that proudly sedate damsel thus suddenly breaking the ice
of her public behaviour?

For a mere school girl she had certainly done the lady's part well.
What she wore I do not exactly know; nor would it perhaps be well
to describe what might seem grotesque to such prejudiced readers