“For instance, it incites and helps you defy your guardian on the street!”

Until now she had resolutely kept her face set churchward, but as he uttered the last words in a severer tone than he often used in conversation with her, she turned quite around and retraced her steps.

Walking beside her, he could only see the long soft lashes of her downcast eyes, and the firm compression of her mouth.

“Little girl, are you very angry?”

She looked up quickly into his brilliant smiling eyes, and her cheek dimpled.

“Mr. Palma, I wanted so very much to go, and I do feel disappointed; but not angry.”

“Then why do you not ask me to go with you?”

“You go there?  Is it possible that you would ever do such a thing?  Really would you go, sir?”

“Try me.”

“Please Mr. Palma, go with me.”

He raised his hat, bowed, and said: 

“I will.”

“Oh, thank you!”

They turned and walked back in silence until they reached the door, and he asked: 

“Are the pews free?”

“Yes, sir; but Mrs. Mason and I generally sit yonder by that column.”

“Very well, you must pilot me.”

She turned into the side aisle next the windows, and they seated themselves in a pew just beyond the projection of the choir gallery.

The edifice was small, but the altar and pulpit were handsome, and though the windows were unstained, the light was mellowed by buff inside blinds.  The seats were by no means filled, and the congregation was composed of people whose appearance denoted that many belonged to the labouring class, and none to the Brahmin caste of millionnaires, though all were neatly and genteely apparelled.

As the silver-haired pastor entered the pulpit the organ began to throb in a low prelude, and four gentlemen bore shallow waiters through the assemblage, to receive the contribution for the “Destitute.”  Mr. Palma saw his companion take something from her glove, and when the waiter reached them and she put in her small alms, which he judged amounted to twenty-five cents, he slipped his fingers in his vest pocket and dropped a bill on the plate.

“Is all that huge sum going to India to the missionaries?” he gravely whispered.

“It is to feed the poor of this church.”

As the organ swelled fuller and louder, Mr. Palma saw Regina start, and listen intently; then the choir begin to sing, and she turned very pale and shut her eyes.  He could discover nothing remarkable in the music,—­“Oh that I had wings!” but as it progressed the girl’s emotion increased, became almost uncontrollable, and through the closed lids the tears forced themselves rapidly, while she trembled visibly, and seemed trying to swallow her sobs.

He moved closer to her, and the blue eyes opened and looked at him with such pleading deprecating misery in their beautiful depths, that he was touched, and involuntarily laid his ungloved hand on her little bare fingers.  Instantly they closed around it, twining like soft tendrils about his, and unconsciously his clasp tightened.