veil or mist that troubled her. This gesture she repeated now and again
during the hour before church time. Mistress Stagg heard no more of the
ball this morning than she had heard the night before. Something ailed the
girl. She was not sullen, but she could not or would not talk. Perhaps,
despite the fact of the Westover coach, she had not been kindly used at
the Palace. The ex-actress pursed her lips, and confided to her Mirabell
that times were not what they once were. Had she not, at Bath, been given
a ticket to the Saturday ball by my Lord Squander himself? Ay, and she had
footed it, too, in the country dance, with the best of them, with captains
and French counts and gentlemen and ladies of title,--ay, and had gone
down the middle with, the very pattern of Sir Harry Wildair! To be sure,
no one had ever breathed a word against her character; but, for her part,
she believed no great harm of Audrey, either. Look at the girl's eyes,
now: they were like a child's or a saint's.

Mirabell nodded and looked wise, but said nothing.

When the church bells rang Audrey was ready, and she walked to church with
Mistress Stagg much as, the night before, she had walked between the
lilacs to the green door when the Westover coach had passed from her
sight. Now she sat in the church much as she had sat at the window the
night through. She did not know that people were staring at her; nor had
she caught the venomous glance of Mistress Deborah, already in the pew,
and aware of more than had come to her friend's ears.

Audrey was not listening, was scarcely thinking. Her hands were crossed in
her lap, and now and then she raised one and made the motion of pushing
aside from her eyes something heavy that clung and blinded. What part of
her spirit that was not wholly darkened and folded within itself was back
in the mountains of her childhood, with those of her own blood whom she