Audrey knelt with the rest, but she did not pray.  And when it was all over, and the benediction had been given, and she found herself without the church, she looked at the green trees against the clear autumnal skies and at the graves in the churchyard as though it were a new world into which she had stepped.  She could not have said that she found it fair.  Her place had been so near the door that well-nigh all the congregation was behind her, streaming out of the church, eager to reach the open air, where it might discuss the sermon, the futile and scandalous interruption by the notorious Mr. Darden, and what Mr. Marmaduke Haward might have said or done had he been present.

Only Mistress Stagg kept beside her; for Mistress Deborah hung back, unwilling to be seen in her company, and Darden, from that momentary awakening of his better nature, had sunk to himself again, and thought not how else he might aid this wounded member of his household.  But Mary Stagg was a kindly soul, whose heart had led her comfortably through life with very little appeal to her head.  The two or three young women—­Oldfields and Porters of the Virginian stage—­who were under indentures to her husband and herself found her as much their friend as mistress.  Their triumphs in the petty playhouse of this town of a thousand souls were hers, and what woes they had came quickly to her ears.  Now she would have slipped her hand into Audrey’s and have given garrulous comfort, as the two passed alone through the churchyard gate and took their way up Palace Street toward the small white house.  But Audrey gave not her hand, did not answer, made no moan, neither justified herself nor blamed another.  She did not speak at all, but after the first glance about her moved like a sleepwalker.

When the house was reached she went up to the bedroom.  Mistress Deborah, entering stormily ten minutes later, found herself face to face with a strange Audrey, who, standing in the middle of the floor, raised her hand for silence in a gesture so commanding that the virago stayed her tirade, and stood open-mouthed.

“I wish to speak,” said the new Audrey.  “I was waiting for you.  There’s a question I wish to ask, and I’ll ask it of you who were never kind to me.”

“Never kind to her!” cried the minister’s wife to the four walls.  “And she’s been taught, and pampered, and treated more like a daughter than the beggar wench she is!  And this is my return,—­to sit by her in church to-day, and have all Virginia think her belonging to me”—­

“I belong to no one,” said Audrey.  “Even God does not want me.  Be quiet until I have done.”  She made again the gesture of pushing aside from face and eyes the mist that clung and blinded.  “I know now what they say,” she went on.  “The preacher told me awhile ago.  Last night a lady spoke to me:  now I know what was her meaning.  Because Mr. Haward, who saved my life, who brought me from the mountains, who left me, when he sailed away, where