She—she will look again, if only to assure herself of her own folly. Slowly, slowly she lifts her eyes—the eyes that now are standing in a very white face—and looks with a desperate courage at the Crosby pew. Her eyes meet full the eyes of its one occupant, and then Susan tells herself that it is all over, and death alone is to be looked for.
For the eyes of the Crosby pew man are the eyes of Susan’s thief. There can be no mistake about it any longer. The man who sits in Mr. Crosby’s pew and Susan’s repentant thief are one and the same.
Her eyes seem to cling to his. In the fever of horror that has overtaken her, she feels as if she could never remove them. For a full minute the man in the Crosby pew and Susan kneel, staring at each other; and then suddenly something happens. Lady Millbank, who is sitting in the pew before that of the Crosbys, turns round and hands Susan’s thief a Prayer-book. That in itself would be very well—everyone should give a thief a Prayer-book—but Lady Millbank has accompanied her gift with a friendly nod of recognition, a charming smile—the smile that Susan so well knows, the smile that is only given to those whom Lady Millbank desires to honour or to be in with.
It is all quite plain now. The thief is Mr. Crosby, and Susan with a groan lets her face fall upon her clasped hands, and hopes vainly for the earth to open and swallow her up quick.
But the earth is a stupid thing, and never does anything nowadays. Not a single earthquake appears for Susan’s accommodation, and the good old church is not conscious of even a quiver. The service goes on. The Litany is done. They all rise from their knees, and the curate gives out a hymn:
‘“O Paradise! O Paradise!”’
Poor Susan feels as if ‘O Purgatory!’ would be much nearer it, so far as she is concerned. She would have stopped the hymn there and then if she could, feeling utterly upset and nervous. But it would take a great many feelings to stop a church service when it is once in full swing; and the hymn goes on gaily in spite of Susan’s despair. It reaches, indeed, a most satisfactory ending, in spite of a slight contretemps occasioned by the one unlucky Protestant maid belonging to the Rectory, called Sarah.
Poor Sarah has this day for the first time put on a hat of which a brilliant magenta feather is the principal feature. Hitherto it has not caught Miss Barry’s eye—a wonder in itself even greater than the magenta feather, as this estimable spinster, with a view to keeping the servants’ moral conduct perfect, has elected that they shall sit on a bench in the big square Rectory pew right before her and her nephew and nieces.
It is at the beginning of the first verse that Miss Barry’s eye lights on the monstrosity in Sarah’s hat. Feathers and flowers are abominations in Miss Barry’s eyes when worn by the ‘common people,’ as she calls those beneath her in the social scale. How dare that impertinent girl come to church with such an immodest ornament on her head! What on earth is the world coming to? She must, she will, speak to her; impossible to let her enjoy that feather another second.
If she can’t speak, she can at all events sing at her.