Her quest was unrewarded, however, for no one entered the pew except Mr. Arnold and one of his daughters.  The absence of Mrs. Arnold and the invalid son filled her with forebodings and the memory of the past; the influence of the place combined with her fears was so depressing that by the time the service ended her tears were falling fast behind her veil.  With natural apprehension that her emotion might be observed she looked hastily around, and, with a start, encountered the eyes of Roger Atwood.  Her tears seemed to freeze on her cheeks, and she half shuddered in strong revulsion of feeling.  She had come to see the man she loved; after months of patient waiting she had at last so far yielded to the cravings of her heart as to seek but a glimpse of one who fed her dearest earthly hope; but his place is vacant.  In his stead she finds, almost at her side, one whom she hoped never to see again; and she knew he was offering through his dark eyes a regard loathed in her inmost soul.  She was oppressed with a sudden, superstitious fear that she could not escape him—­that he was endowed with such a remorseless will and persistence that by some strange necessity she might yield in spite of herself.  Belle’s words, “He’ll win you yet,” seemed like a direful prophecy.  How it could ever be fulfilled she could not imagine; but his mere presence caused a flutter of fear, and the consciousness that she was followed by a man pre-eminently gifted with that subtle power before which most obstacles crumble made her shiver with an undefined dread.

She believed her veil had been no protection—­that he had seen her emotion and divined its cause, indeed that nothing could escape his eyes.  She also felt sure that he had come to the city to carry out the projects which he had vaguely outlined to her, and that henceforth she could never be sure, when away from home, that his searching eyes were not upon her.  However well-intentioned his motive might be, to her it would be an odious system of espionage.  There was but one way in which she could resent it—­by a cold and steadily maintained indifference, and she left the church without any sign of recognition, feeling that her lowered veil should have taught him that she was shunning observation, and that he had no right to watch her.  She went home not only greatly depressed, but incensed, for it was the same to her as if she had been intruded upon at a moment of sacred privacy, and coldly scrutinized while she was giving way to feelings that she would hide from all the world.  That he could not know this, and that it was no great breach of delicacy for a young man to sit in the same church with a lady of his acquaintance, and even to regard her with sympathy, she did not consider.  She was in no mood to do him justice, and circumstances had imbued her mind with intense prejudice.  She was by no means perfect, nor above yielding to very unjust prejudices when tempted to them by so unwelcome an interest as that entertained by Roger Atwood.