"I saw him go in a full quarter of an hour since, and Marion Fay went in before. I feel quite sure that she knew that he was expected." Thus spoke Clara Demijohn to her mother.

"How could she have known it," asked Mrs. Duffer, who was present in Mrs. Demijohn\'s parlour, where the two younger women were standing with their faces close to the window, with their gloves on and best bonnets, ready for church.

"I am sure she did, because she had made herself smarter than ever with her new brown silk, and her new brown gloves, and her new brown hat,—sly little Quaker that she is. I can see when a girl has made herself up for some special occasion. She wouldn\'t have put on new gloves surely to go to church with Mrs. Roden."

"If you stay staring there any longer you\'ll both be late," said Mrs. Demijohn.

"Mrs. Roden hasn\'t gone yet," said Clara, lingering. It was Sunday morning, and the ladies at No. 10 were preparing for their devotions. Mrs. Demijohn herself never went to church, having some years since had a temporary attack of sciatica, which had provided her with a perpetual excuse for not leaving the house on a Sunday morning. She was always left at home with a volume of Blair\'s Sermons; but Clara, who was a clever girl, was well aware that more than half a page was never read. She was aware also that great progress was then made with the novel which happened to have last come into the house from the little circulating library round the corner. The ringing of the neighbouring church bell had come to its final tinkling, and Mrs. Duffer knew that she must start, or disgrace herself in the eyes of the pew-opener. "Come, my dear," she said; and away they went. As the door of No. 10 opened so did that of No. 11 opposite, and the four ladies, including Marion Fay, met in the road. "You have a visitor this morning," said Clara.

"Yes;—a friend of my son\'s."

"We know all about it," said Clara. "Don\'t you think he\'s a very fine-looking young man, Miss Fay?"

"Yes, I do," said Marion. "He is certainly a handsome young man."

"Beauty is but skin deep," said Mrs. Duffer.

"But still it goes a long way," said Clara, "particularly with high birth and noble rank."

"He is an excellent young man, as far as I know him," said Mrs. Roden, thinking that she was called upon to defend her son\'s friend.

Hampstead had returned home on the Saturday, and had taken the earliest opportunity on the following Sunday morning to go over to his friend at Holloway. The distance was about six miles, and he had driven over, sending the vehicle back with the intention of walking home. He would get his friend to walk with him, and then should take place that conversation which he feared would become excessively unpleasant before it was finished. He was shown up to the drawing-room of No. 11, and there he found all alone a young woman whom he had never seen before. This was Marion Fay, the daughter of Zachary Fay, a Quaker, who lived at No. 17, Paradise Row. "I had thought Mrs. Roden was here," he said.

"Mrs. Roden will be down directly. She is putting her bonnet on to go to church."

"And Mr. Roden?" he asked. "He I suppose is not going to church with her?"

"Ah, no; I wish he were. George Roden never goes to church."

"Is he a friend of yours?"

"For his mother\'s sake I was speaking;—but why not for his also? He is not specially my friend, but I wish well to all men. He is not at home at present, but I understood that he will be here shortly."

"Do you always go to church?" he asked, grounding his question not on any impertinent curiosity as to her observance of her religious duties, but because he had thought from her dress she must certainly be a Quaker.

"I do usually go to your church on a Sunday."

"Nay," said he, "I have no right to claim it as my church. I fear you must regard me also as a heathen,—as you do George Roden."

"I am sorry for that, sir. It cannot be good that any man should be a heathen when so much Christian teaching is abroad. But men I think allow themselves a freedom of thought from which women in their timidity are apt to shrink. If so it is surely good that we should be cowards?" Then the door opened, and Mrs. Roden came into the room.

"George is gone," she said, "to call on a sick friend, but he will be back immediately. He got your letter yesterday evening, and he left word that I was to tell you that he would be back by eleven. Have you introduced yourself to my friend Miss Fay?"

"I had not heard her name," he said smiling, "but we had introduced ourselves."

"Marion Fay is my name," said the girl, "and yours, I suppose is—Lord Hampstead."

"So now we may be supposed to know each other for ever after," he replied, laughing; "—only I fear, Mrs. Roden, that your friend will repudiate the acquaintance because I do not go to church."

"I said not so, Lord Hampstead. The nearer we were to being friends,—if that were possible,—the more I should regret it." Then the two ladies started on their morning duty.

Lord Hampstead when he was alone immediately decided that he would like to have Marion Fay for a friend, and not the less so because she went to church. He felt that she had been right in saying that audacity in speculation on religious subjects was not becoming a young woman. As it was unfitting that his sister Lady Frances should marry a Post Office clerk, so would it have been unbecoming that Marion Fay should have been what she herself called a heathen. Surely of all the women on whom his eyes had ever rested she was,—he would not say to himself the most lovely,—but certainly the best worth looking at. The close brown bonnet and the little cap, and the well-made brown silk dress, and the brown gloves on her little hands, together made, to his eyes, as pleasing a female attire as a girl could well wear. Could it have been by accident that the graces of her form were so excellently shown? It had to be supposed that she, as a Quaker, was indifferent to outside feminine garniture. It is the theory of a Quaker that she should be so, and in every article she had adhered closely to Quaker rule. As far as he could see there was not a ribbon about her. There was no variety of colour. Her head-dress was as simple and close as any that could have been worn by her grandmother. Hardly a margin of smooth hair appeared between her cap and her forehead. Her dress fitted close to her neck, and on her shoulders she wore a tight-fitting shawl. The purpose in her raiment had been Quaker all through. The exquisite grace must have come altogether by accident,—just because it had pleased nature to make her gracious! As to all this there might perhaps be room for doubt. Whether there had been design or not might possibly afford scope for consideration. But that the grace was there was a matter which required no consideration, and admitted of no doubt.

As Marion Fay will have much to do with our story, it will be well that some further description should be given here of herself and of her condition in life. Zachary Fay, her father, with whom she lived, was a widower with no other living child. There had been many others, who had all died, as had also their mother. She had been a prey to consumption, but had lived long enough to know that she had bequeathed the fatal legacy to her offspring,—to all of them except to Marion, who, when her mother died, had seemed to be exempted from the terrible curse of the family. She had then been old enough to receive her mother\'s last instructions as to her father, who was then a broken-hearted man struggling with difficulty against the cruelty of Providence. Why should it have been that God should thus afflict him,—him who had no other pleasure in the world, no delights, but those which were afforded to him by the love of his wife and children? It was to be her duty to comfort him, to make up as best she might by her tenderness for all that he had lost and was losing. It was to be especially her duty to soften his heart in all worldly matters, and to turn him as far as possible to the love of heavenly things. It was now two years since her mother\'s death, and in all things she had endeavoured to perform the duties which her mother had exacted from her.

But Zachary Fay was not a man whom it was easy to turn hither and thither. He was a stern, hard, just man, of whom it may probably be said that if a world were altogether composed of such, the condition of such a world would be much better than that of the world we know;—for generosity is less efficacious towards permanent good than justice, and tender speaking less enduring in its beneficial results than truth. His enemies, for he had enemies, said of him that he loved money. It was no doubt true; for he that does not love money must be an idiot. He was certainly a man who liked to have what was his own, who would have been irate with any one who h............