“How beautiful!” she murmured—­“How very beautiful!”

Cicely rose from the organ-stool, and turned round.

“Here is Mr. Walden,” she said, in quite a matter-of-fact way as she perceived him.  “It is Mr. Walden, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” replied John, advancing with a smile—­“And very fortunate Mr. Walden is to have heard such lovely singing!”

“Oh, that’s not lovely,” said Cicely, carelessly—­“I was only humming the last verse, just to put the expression right.  I thought it must be you!—­though, of course, as I have not been introduced to you, I couldn’t be sure!  Maryllia—­Miss Vancourt—­has told me all about you,—­and I know she has written twice since I’ve been here to ask you up to the Manor—­once to tea, and once to dinner.  Why haven’t you come?” Walden was slightly embarrassed by this point-blank question.  It was perfectly true he had received two invitations from the lady of the Manor, and had refused both.  Why he had refused, he could not himself have told.

“I suppose you didn’t want to meet me!” said Cicely, showing all her white teeth in a flashing smile—­“But there’s no escape for it, you see,—­here I am!  I’m not such a rascal as I look, though!  I’ve been playing accompaniments for the children!—­go on singing, please!”—­ and she addressed Miss Eden and Susie Prescott, who collecting their straying thoughts, began hesitatingly to resume the interrupted practice—­“It’s a nice little organ—­very full and sweet.  The church is perfectly exquisite!  I come in every day to look at it except Sundays.”

“Why except Sundays?” asked Walden, amused.

She gave him a quaint side-glance.

“I’ll tell you some day,—­not now!”—­she answered—­“This is not the fitting time or place.”  She moved to the altar rails, and hung over them, looking at the alabaster sarcophagus “This thing has a perfect fascination for me!” she went on—­“I can’t bear not to know whose bones are inside!  I wonder you haven’t opened it.”

“It was not meant to be opened by those who closed it,” said Walden, quietly.

Cicely drooped her gipsy-bright eyes.

“That’s one for me!” she thought—­“He’s just like what Maryllia says he is,—­very certain of his own mind, and not likely to move out of his own way.”

“I think,” pursued Walden—­“if you knew that someone very dear to you had been laid in that sarcophagus ‘to eternal rest,’ you would resent any disturbance of even the mere dust of what was once life,- -would you not?”

“I might;” said Cicely dubiously—­“But I have never had any ’someone very dear to me’ except Maryllia Vancourt.  And if she died, I should die too!”

John was silent, but he looked at her with increased interest and kindliness.

They walked out of the church together, and once in the open air, he became politely conventional.

“And how is Miss Vancourt?” he enquired.