Owen reached the church-door a few minutes before the bells began chiming.  Nobody was yet in the church, and he walked round the aisles.  From Cytherea’s frequent description of how and where herself and others used to sit, he knew where to look for Manston’s seat; and after two or three errors of examination he took up a prayer-book in which was written ‘Eunice Manston.’  The book was nearly new, and the date of the writing about a month earlier.  One point was at any rate established:  that the woman living with Manston was presented to the world as no other than his lawful wife.

The quiet villagers of Carriford required no pew-opener in their place of worship:  natives and in-dwellers had their own seats, and strangers sat where they could.  Graye took a seat in the nave, on the north side, close behind a pillar dividing it from the north aisle, which was completely allotted to Miss Aldclyffe, her farmers, and her retainers, Manston’s pew being in the midst of them.  Owen’s position on the other side of the passage was a little in advance of Manston’s seat, and so situated that by leaning forward he could look directly into the face of any person sitting there, though, if he sat upright, he was wholly hidden from such a one by the intervening pillar.

Aiming to keep his presence unknown to Manston if possible, Owen sat, without once turning his head, during the entrance of the congregation.  A rustling of silk round by the north passage and into Manston’s seat, told him that some woman had entered there, and as it seemed from the accompaniment of heavier footsteps, Manston was with her.

Immediately upon rising up, he looked intently in that direction, and saw a lady standing at the end of the seat nearest himself.  Portions of Manston’s figure appeared on the other side of her.  In two glances Graye read thus many of her characteristics, and in the following order:—­

She was a tall woman.

She was broad at the shoulders.

She was full-bosomed.

She was easily recognizable from the photograph but nothing could be discerned of the colour of her eyes.

With a preoccupied mind he withdrew into his nook, and heard the service continued—­only conscious of the fact that in opposition to the suspicion which one odd circumstance had bred in his sister concerning this woman, all ostensible and ordinary proofs and probabilities tended to the opposite conclusion.  There sat the genuine original of the portrait—­could he wish for more?  Cytherea wished for more.  Eunice Manston’s eyes were blue, and it was necessary that this woman’s eyes should be blue also.

Unskilled labour wastes in beating against the bars ten times the energy exerted by the practised hand in the effective direction.  Owen felt this to be the case in his own and Edward’s attempts to follow up the clue afforded them.  Think as he might, he could not think of a crucial test in the matter absorbing him, which should possess the indispensable attribute—­a capability of being applied privately; that in the event of its proving the lady to be the rightful owner of the name she used, he might recede without obloquy from an untenable position.