"Stay here, Plato!" she whispered to her four-footed comrade, who, understanding the mandate, lay down at once submissively in the porch to wait her pleasure.
Entering the sacred shrine she stood still,—awed by its exquisite beauty and impressive simplicity. The deep silence, the glamour of the soft vari-coloured light that flowed through the lancet windows on either side,—the open purity of the nave, without any disfiguring pews or fixed seats to mar its clear space,—(for the chairs which were used at service were all packed away in a remote corner out of sight)—the fair, slender columns, springing up into flowering capitals, like the stems of palms breaking into leaf- coronals,—the dignified plainness of the altar, with that strange white sarcophagus set in front of it,—all these taken together, composed a picture of sweet sanctity and calm unlike anything she had ever seen before. Her emotional nature responded to the beautiful in all things, and this small perfectly designed House of Prayer, with its unknown saintly occupant at rest within its walls, touched her almost to tears. Stepping on tip-toe up to the altar- rails, she instinctively dropped on her knees, while she read all that could be seen of the worn inscription on the sarcophagus from that side-'In Resurrectione—Sanctorum—Resurget.' The atmosphere around her seemed surcharged with mystical suggestions,—a vague poetic sense of the super-human and divine moved her to a faint touch of fear, and made her heart beat more quickly than its wont.
"It is lovely—lovely!" she murmured under her breath, as she rose from her kneeling attitude—"The whole church is a perfect gem of architecture! I have never seen anything more beautiful in its way,- -not even the Chapel of the Thorn at Pisa. And according to Mrs. Spruce's account, the man I met this morning—the quizzical parson with the grey-brown curly-locks, did it all at his own expense—he must really be quite clever,—such an unusual thing for a country clergyman!"
She took another observant survey of the whole building, and then went out again into the churchyard. There she paused, her dog beside her, shading her eyes from the sun as she looked wistfully from right to left across the sadly suggestive little hillocks of mossy turf besprinkled with daisies, in search of an object which was as a landmark of disaster in her life.
She saw it at last, and moved slowly towards it,—a plain white marble cross, rising from a smooth grassy eminence, where a rambling rose, carefully and even artistically trained, was just beginning to show pale creamy buds among its glossy dark green leaves. Great tears rose to her eyes and fell unheeded, as she read the brief inscription—'Sacred to the Memory of Robert Vancourt of Abbot's Manor,' this being followed by the usual dates of birth and death, and the one word 'Resting.' With tender touch Maryllia gathered one leaf from the climbing rose foliage, and kissing it amid her tears, turned away, unable to bear the thoughts and memories which began to crowd thickly upon her. Almost she seemed to hear her father's deep mellow voice which had been the music of her childhood, playfully saying as was so often his wont:—"Well, my little girl! How goes the world with you?" Alas, the world had gone very ill with her for a long, long time after his death! Hers was too loving and passionately clinging a nature to find easy consolation for such a loss. Her uncle Frederick, though indulgent to her and always kind, had never filled her father's place,—her uncle Frederick's American wife, had, in spite of much conscientious tutelage and chaperonage, altogether failed to win her affection or sympathy. The sorrowful sense that she was an orphan, all alone as it were with herself to face the mystery of life, never deserted her,—and it was perhaps in the most brilliant centres of society that this consciousness of isolation chiefly weighed upon her. She saw other girls around her with their fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters,—but she—she, by the very act of being born had caused her mother's death,—and she well knew that her father's heart, quietly as he had endured his grief to all outward appearances, had never healed of that agonising wound.
"I think I should never have come into the world at all,"—she said to herself with a sigh, as she returned over the fields to the Manor—"I am no use to anybody,—I never have been of any use! Aunt Emily says all I have to do to show my sense of proper feeling and gratitude to her for her care of me is to marry—and marry well— marry Lord Roxmouth, in short—he will be a duke when his father dies, and Aunt Emily would like to have the satisfaction of leaving her millions to enrich an English dukedom. Nothing could commend itself more favourably to her ideas—only it just happens my ideas won't fit in the same groove. Oh dear! Why can't I be 'amenable' and become a future duchess, and 'build up' the fortunes of a great family? I don't know I'm sure,—except that I don't feel like it! Great families don't appeal to me. I shouldn't care if there were none left. They are never interesting at the best of times,—perhaps out of several of them may come one clever man or woman,—and all the rest will be utter noodles. It isn't worth while to marry Roxmouth on such dubious grounds of possibility!"
Entering the Manor, she was conscious of some fatigue and listlessness,—a touch of depression weighed down her naturally bright spirits. She exchanged her home-spun walking dress for a tea- gown, and descended somewhat languidly to the morning-room where tea was served with more ceremoniousness than on the previous day, Primmins having taken command, with the assistance of the footman. Both men-servants stole respectful glances at their mistress, as she sat pensively alone at the open window, looking out on the verdant landscape that spread away from the terrace, in undulations of lawn, foliage and field to the last border of trees that closed in Abbot's Manor grounds from the public highway. Both would have said had they been asked, that she was much too pretty and delicate to be all alone in the great old house, with no companion of her own age to exchange ideas with by speech or glance,—and, with that masculine self-assurance which is common to all the lords of creation, whether they be emperors or household domestics, they would have opined that 'she ought to be married.' In which they would have entirely agreed with Maryllia's 'dragon' Aunt Emily. But Maryllia's own mind was far from being set on such themes as love and marriage. Her meditations were melancholy, and not unmixed with self-reproach. She blamed herself for having stayed away so long from her childhood's home, and her father's grave.
"I might have visited it at least once a year!" she thought with sharp compunction—"I never really forgot,—why did I seem to forget?"
The sun was sinking slowly in a glory of crimson and amber cloud, when, having resolved upon what she was going to do, she entered the picture-gallery. Softly she trod the polished floor,—with keen quick instinct and appreciative eyes, she noted the fine Vandyke portraits,—the exquisite Greuze that shone out, star-like, from a dark corner of the panelled walls,—and walking with measured pace she went straight up to the picture of 'Mary Elia Adelgisa de Vaignecourt'—and gazed at it with friendly and familiar eyes.
"I know YOU quite well!"—she said, addressing the painted beauty— "I have often dreamed about you since I left home! I always admired you and wanted to be like you. I remember when I must have been about seven or eight years old, I ran in from a game in the garden one summer's afternoon, and I knelt down in front of you and I said: 'Pray God make little Maryllia as pretty as big Mary Elia!' And I think,—I really do think—though of course I'm not half or quarter as pretty, I'm just a little like you! Just a very, very little! For instance my hair is the same colour—almost—and my eyes—no! I'm sure I haven't such beautiful eyes as yours—I wish I had!"