the churchwarden half starting up as if to exercise his authority, and the parson swelling with a vast expanse of sable robes over the Book, with no abashedness and yet no boldness nor unmaidenly forwardness.  There was an innocent gayety on her face like a child’s, and an entire confidence in good will and loving charity for her tardiness which disarmed all.  She looked out from that gauze love-hood of hers as she came up the aisle, and the governor, who had a harsh face enough ordinarily, beamed mildly indulgent.  His lady eyed her with a sort of pleasant and reminiscent wonder, though she was a haughty dame.  The churchwarden settled back, and as for Parson Downs, his great, red face curved in a smile, and his eyes twinkled under their heavy overhang of florid brow, and then he declaimed in a hoarser and louder shout than ever to cover the fact of his wandering attention.  And young Sir Humphrey Hyde, sitting between his mother, Lady Betty, and his sister, Cicely, turned as pale as death when he saw her enter, and kept so, with frequent covert glances at her from time to time, and I saw him, and knew that he knew about Mistress Mary’s furbelow boxes.

II

My profession has been that of a tutor, and it thus befell that I was under the necessity of learning as much as I was able, and even going out of my way to seek those lessons at which all the pages of life are open for us, and even, as it were, turning over wayside stones, and looking under wayside weeds in the search for them; and it scarcely ever chanced that I did not get some slight savour of knowledge therefrom, though I was far enough from the full solution of the problems.  And through these lessons I seemed to gain some increase of wisdom not only of the matters of which the lessons themselves treated, such as the courses of the stars and planets, the roots of herbs, and Latin verbs and algebraic quantities, and evil and good, but of their bearing upon the human heart.  That I have ever held to be the most important knowledge of all, and the only reason for the setting of those lessons which must pass like all things mortal, and can only live in so far as they have turned that part of the scholar, which has hold of immortality, this or that way.

I know not how it may be with other men, but of one branch of knowledge, which pertains directly to the human heart, and, when it be what its name indicates, to its eternal life, I gained no insight whatever from my books and my lessons, nor from my observance of its workings in those around me, and that was the passion of love.  Of that I truly could learn naught except by turning my reflections toward my own heart.