could not have done—­it roused her to wipe away the traces of her tears, and try with all her might not to shed any more.  Hetty had a certain strength in her vain little nature:  she would have borne anything rather than be laughed at, or pointed at with any other feeling than admiration; she would have pressed her own nails into her tender flesh rather than people should know a secret she did not want them to know.

What fluctuations there were in her busy thoughts and feelings, while Mr. Irwine was pronouncing the solemn “Absolution” in her deaf ears, and through all the tones of petition that followed!  Anger lay very close to disappointment, and soon won the victory over the conjectures her small ingenuity could devise to account for Arthur’s absence on the supposition that he really wanted to come, really wanted to see her again.  And by the time she rose from her knees mechanically, because all the rest were rising, the colour had returned to her cheeks even with a heightened glow, for she was framing little indignant speeches to herself, saying she hated Arthur for giving her this pain—­she would like him to suffer too.  Yet while this selfish tumult was going on in her soul, her eyes were bent down on her prayer-book, and the eyelids with their dark fringe looked as lovely as ever.  Adam Bede thought so, as he glanced at her for a moment on rising from his knees.

But Adam’s thoughts of Hetty did not deafen him to the service; they rather blended with all the other deep feelings for which the church service was a channel to him this afternoon, as a certain consciousness of our entire past and our imagined future blends itself with all our moments of keen sensibility.  And to Adam the church service was the best channel he could have found for his mingled regret, yearning, and resignation; its interchange of beseeching cries for help with outbursts of faith and praise, its recurrent responses and the familiar rhythm of its collects, seemed to speak for him as no other form of worship could have done; as, to those early Christians who had worshipped from their childhood upwards in catacombs, the torch-light and shadows must have seemed nearer the Divine presence than the heathenish daylight of the streets.  The secret of our emotions never lies in the bare object, but in its subtle relations to our own past:  no wonder the secret escapes the unsympathizing observer, who might as well put on his spectacles to discern odours.

But there was one reason why even a chance comer would have found the service in Hayslope Church more impressive than in most other village nooks in the kingdom—­a reason of which I am sure you have not the slightest suspicion.  It was the reading of our friend Joshua Rann.  Where that good shoemaker got his notion of reading from remained a mystery even to his most intimate acquaintances.  I believe, after all, he got it chiefly from Nature, who had poured some of her music into this honest conceited soul, as she