away with a polite inclination and shake of her little head, in refusal of the mignonette, which I have kept ever since. But that smile!

Her whole face lit up, gaining just the colour and expression which it appeared to lack. My fate was sealed; and, as the organ pealed forth the grand prayer from Mosè in Egitto for the exodus of the congregation, and I slowly paced down the aisle after my enchantress, my soul expanded into a very heaven of adoration and love!

Chapter Two.

Expectation.

CONTENTS

 “With what a leaden and retarding weight, Does expectation load the wing of time!” 

When, after a few minutes, I got outside the church, she had disappeared, although I had endeavoured to follow as close as I could on her footsteps, without, of course, appearing to be intrusively watching her.

I had managed too cleverly. She was gone. I had been so long, to my great vexation, painfully pacing after the slowly-moving, out-shuffling mass of ex-worshippers—dexterously essaying the while to avoid treading on the trailing trains of the ladies, or incurring the anathemas, “not loud, but deep,” of gouty old gentlemen with tender feet, which they would put in one’s way—that, on my succeeding at length in arriving at the outer porch, and being enabled to don my hat once more, there was not a single trace of either her mother or herself to be seen anywhere in sight.

Here was a disappointment! While getting-out, I had made up my mind to track them home, and find out where they lived; and now, they might be beyond my ken for ever.

I had noted them both so keenly, as to their appearance and the manner in which each was dressed, for, in spite of mother and daughter being alike “in mourning,” there were still distinctive features in their toilets, that I could not have failed to distinguish them from the rest of the congregation.

But now, my plans were entirely overthrown. What should I do in the emergency? Stop, there was Horner; I would ask him if he had seen them. There, dressed a merveille and with his inseparable eye-glass stuck askew in the corner of his left eye, he stood listlessly criticising the people as they came forth from prayer, in his usual impertinently-inoffensive way. He was just as likely as not to have seen them, and could naturally give me the information I sought about the direction in which they had gone.

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