“I am afraid you are not well to-night, Miss Wiltshire,” he at length said, in a tone low and gentle as a woman’s, for Agnes, seated on a corner of the sofa, and imagining herself unobserved by the rest of the company, had for a moment closed her eyes, as though to shut out surrounding objects, while an expression of mental anguish flitted across her features.

How precious to the aching heart is human sympathy.  The words were nothing in themselves, but the tenderness of tone in which they were spoken, told plainly that it was anything but a matter of indifference to the speaker, and Agnes, blushing deeply as she met Arthur’s compassionate glance, felt the conviction, darting like a ray of sunbeam through her mind, that to at least one person in the world she was dearer than aught else beside.

“I have only a slight headache,” was her reply to his kind inquiry, and one which was strictly correct, for the headache was the result of mental agitation during the day.

“I shall recommend you, then, to sit quite still, while I constitute myself, for the evening, your devoted knight; and shall, therefore, remain here, ready to obey your slightest behests, be they what they may.”

“I shall certainly then insist, in the first place, that others be not deprived of the pleasure of your company for my gratification.  I should be selfish, indeed, if I allowed you to do so.”

“Notwithstanding, here I am, and here I intend to remain until I am forced away,” said Arthur, smiling as, seating himself comfortably beside her on the sofa, he drew a portfolio from the centre table, which contained some sketches taken during his recent tour, and, in pointing out the different places and relating his adventures in each, Agnes became so much interested as to forget her headache, and even the anxiety which had weighed down her mind but a short time before.

There was one picture that seemed particularly to attract her attention.  It was the sketch of a small church, whose white walls peeped out from the midst of thick foliage, and whose opened doors seemed to welcome the worshippers that in every direction were seen apparently wending their way towards it.

Agnes gazed at it long and earnestly.  She laid it down and took it up again, while Arthur, who could not imagine why she seemed to admire this sketch in preference to others whose artistic merits were far superior, gazed on her with some surprise.

“I see you are wondering, Mr. Bernard,” she said, as she marked the inquiring expression of his countenance, “why this scene should particularly attract me.  It is because it reminds me of the happiest hours of my life, for, in a church, whose situation and appearance exactly resembles this, I first learned where true bliss was to be found.”

“A valuable lesson truly, Miss Wiltshire, and one which I would feel thankful if you could impart to me, for I assure you I am sadly in need of it.  Dissatisfied with the world, I still see so much hypocrisy in the church,—­there are so many, even among those who minister in holy things, who seem by their actions wedded to the vanities which they profess to renounce, that I turn away with a feeling akin to disgust, and am almost ready to believe that the piety which characterized the first professors of Christianity has totally disappeared.”