"So loud!" said Lady Beaulyon, breathing the words delicately against her friend's Titian-red hair.
"So provincial!" rejoined Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay, in the same dulcet undertone, adding to her remark the fervent—"Lord have mercy upon us and incline our hearts to keep this law!"
One very gratifying circumstance to these ladies, however, and one that considerably astonished all the members of Miss Vancourt's house-party, as well as Miss Vancourt herself, was that no 'collection' was made. Neither the church, the poor, nor some distant mission to the heathen served as any excuse for begging, in the shrine of the 'Saint's Rest.' No vestige of a money-box or 'plate' was to be seen anywhere. And this fact pre-disposed them to survey Walden's face and figure with critical attention as he left the chancel and ascended the pulpit during the singing of 'The Lord is my Shepherd.' At the opening chords of that quaint and simple hymn, Cicely Bourne glanced at Miss Eden and Susie Prescott with a little suggestive smile, and caught their appealing glances,—then, as the quavering chorus of boys and girls began, she raised her voice as the 'leading soprano,' and like a thread of gold it twined round all the notes and tied them together in clear and lovely unison:
"The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want,
He maketh me down to lie,
In pleasant fields where the lilies grow,
And the river runneth by."
Everyone in the congregation stared and seemed stricken with sudden wonderment. Such singing they had never heard before. Mrs. Bludlip Courtenay put up her lorgnon.
"It's Maryllia Vancourt's creature,"—she whispered—"The ugly child she picked up in Paris. I suppose it really IS a voice?"
"It really is, I think!" responded Lady Beaulyon, languidly, turning her fair head to look at the plain sallow girl with the untidy black hair whom she had only seen for a few minutes on her arrival at Abbot's Manor the previous day, and whom she had scarcely noticed. But Cicely saw her not—her whole soul was in her singing,—and she had no glance even for Julian Adderley, who, gazing at her as if she were already the prima donna in an opera, listened enrapt.
"The Lord is my Shepherd; He feedeth me,
In the depth of a desert land;
And, lest I should in the darkness slip,
He holdeth me by the hand."
Maryllia felt a contraction in her throat, and her eyes unconsciously filled with tears. How sweet that hymn was!—how very sweet! Tender memories of her father crowded upon her,—her mother's face, grown familiar to her sight from her daily visits to the now no longer veiled picture in the Manor gallery, shone out upon her from the altar like a glorified angel above the white sarcophagus where the word 'Resurget' sparkled jewel-like in the sunshine,—and she began to feel that after all there was something in the Christian faith that was divinely helpful and uplifting to the soul.
"The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want,
My mind on Him is stayed,
And though through the Valley of Death I walk,
I shall not be afraid!"