At the same moment Mrs. Simcoe was closing her window high over Hope’s head.  Her face was turned toward the sunset with the usual calm impassive look, and as she gazed at the darkening landscape she was singing, in her murmuring way,

“I rest upon thy word;
  Thy promise is for me: 
My succor and salvation, Lord,
  Shall surely come from thee. 
But let me still abide,
  Nor from my hope remove,
Till thou my patient spirit guide
  Into thy perfect love.”

CHAPTER III.

Ave Maria!

Mr. Gray’s boys sat in several pews, which he could command with his eye from his own seat in the broad aisle.  Every Sunday morning at the first stroke of the bell the boys began to stroll toward the church.  But after they were seated, and the congregation had assembled, and Dr. Peewee had gone up into the pulpit, the wheels of a carriage were heard outside—­steps were let down—­there was an opening of doors, a slight scuffing and treading, and old Christopher Burt entered.  His head was powdered, and he wore a queue.  His coat collar was slightly whitened with-powder, and he carried a gold-headed cane.

The boys looked in admiration upon so much respectability, powder, age, and gold cane united in one person.

But all the boys were in love with the golden-haired grand-daughter.  They went home to talk about her.  They went to bed to dream of her.  They read Mary Lamb’s stories from Shakespeare, and Hope Wayne was Ophelia, and Desdemona, and Imogen—­above all others, she was Juliet.  They read the “Arabian Nights,” and she was all the Arabian Princesses with unpronounceable names.  They read Miss Edgeworth—­“Helen,” “Belinda.”—­“Oh, thunder!” they cried, and dropped the book to think of Hope.

Hope Wayne was not unconscious of the adoration she excited.  If a swarm of school-boys can not enter a country church without turning all their eyes toward one pew, is it not possible that, when a girl comes in and seats herself in that pew, the very focus of those burning glances, even Dr. Peewee may not entirely distract her mind, however he may rivet her eyes?  As she takes her last glance at the Sunday toilet in her sunny dressing-room at home, and half turns to be sure that the collar is smooth, and that the golden curl nestles precisely as it should under the moss rose-bud that blushes modestly by the side of a lovelier bloom—­is it not just supposable that she thinks, for a wayward instant, of other eyes that will presently scan that figure and face, and feels, with a half-flush, that they will not be shocked nor disappointed?

There was not a boy in Mr. Gray’s school who would have dared to dream that Hope Wayne ever had such a thought.  When she appeared behind Grandfather Burt and the gold-headed cane she had no more antecedents in their imaginations than a rose or a rainbow.  They no more thought of little human weaknesses and mundane influences in regard to her than they thought of cold vapor when they looked at sunset clouds.