She went in among
the gay-looking crowd--the old women in wondrous caps, the sprinkling
of soldiers, the prosperous citizens and citizenesses in their Sunday
splendour--and made her way to a quiet corner remote from the great
carved-oak pulpit and the high altar--a shadowy corner behind a massive
cluster of columns, and near a little wooden door in one of the great
portals, that opened and shut with a clanging noise now and then, and
beside which a dilapidated-looking old man kept watch over a shell-shaped
marble basin of holy water, and offered a brush dipped in the sacred fluid
to devout passers-by. Here she could kneel unobserved, and in her ignorant
fashion, join in the solemn service, lifting up her heart with the
elevation of the host, and acknowledging her guiltiness in utter humility
of spirit.
Yet not always throughout that service could she keep her thoughts from
wandering. Her mind had been too much troubled of late for perfect peace or
abstraction of thought to be possible to her. The consideration of her own
folly was very constantly with her. What a wreck and ruin she had made of
her life--a life which from first to last had been governed by impulse
only!
"If I had been an honourable woman, I should never have married Daniel
Granger," she said to herself. "What right had I to take so much and give
so little--to marry a man I could not even hope to love for the sake of
winning independence for my father, or for the sake of my old home?"
Arden Court--was not that the price which had made her sacrifice tolerable
to her? And she had lost it; the gates of the dwelling she loved were
closed upon her once again--and this time for ever.
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