Thus was comedy played—­and Honora by no the means sure that it was a comedy.  Even her alert instinct had not been able to detect the acting, and the intervening hours were spent in speculating whether her fears had not been overdone.  Nevertheless, under the eyes of Starling, at twenty minutes to eleven she stepped into the victoria with an outward courage, and drove down the shady avenue towards the gates.  Sweet-toned bells were ringing as she reached the residence portion of the town, and subdued pedestrians in groups and couples made their way along the sidewalks.  They stared at her; and she in turn, with heightened colour, stared at her coachman’s back.  After all, this first Sunday would be the most difficult.

The carriage turned into a street arched by old elms, and flanked by the houses of the most prosperous townspeople.  Some of these were of the old-fashioned, classic type, and others new examples of a national architecture seeking to find itself,—­white and yellow colonial, roughcast modifications of the Shakespearian period, and nondescript mixtures of cobblestones and shingles.  Each was surrounded by trim lawns and shrubbery.  The church itself was set back from the street.  It was of bluish stone, and half covered with Virginia creeper.

At this point, had the opportunity for a secret retreat presented itself, Honora would have embraced it, for until now she had not realized the full extent of the ordeal.  Had her arrival been heralded by sounding trumpets, the sensation it caused could not have been greater.  In her Eden, the world had been forgotten; the hum of gossip beyond the gates had not reached her.  But now, as the horses approached the curb, their restive feet clattering on the hard pavement, in the darkened interior of the church she saw faces turned, and entering worshippers pausing in the doorway.  Something of what the event meant for Grenoble dawned upon her:  something, not all; but all that she could bear.

If it be true that there is no courage equal to that which a great love begets in a woman, Honora’s at that moment was sublime.  Her cheeks tingled, and her knees weakened under her as she ran the gantlet to the church door, where she was met by a gentleman on whose face she read astonishment unalloyed:  amazement, perhaps, is not too strong a word for the sensation it conveyed to her, and it occurred to her afterwards that there was an element in it of outrage.  It was a countenance peculiarly adapted to such an expression—­yellow, smooth-shaven, heavy-jowled, with one drooping eye; and she needed not to be told that she had encountered, at the outset, the very pillar of pillars.  The frock coat, the heavy watch chain, the square-toed boots, all combined to make a Presence.

An instinctive sense of drama amongst the onlookers seemed to create a hush, as though these had been the unwilling witnesses to an approaching collision and were awaiting the crash.  The gentleman stood planted in the inner doorway, his drooping eye fixed on hers.