The Beechcote pew was at the back of the church, and as the new mistress of the old house entered and walked down the aisle, she drew the eyes of a large congregation of rustics and small shopkeepers.

Diana moved in a kind of happy absorption, glancing gently from side to side.

This gathering of villagers was to her representative of a spiritual and national fellowship to which she came now to be joined.

The old church, wreathed in ivy and holly; the tombs in the southern aisle; the loaves standing near the porch for distribution after service, in accordance with an old benefaction; the fragments of fifteenth-century glass in the windows; the school-children to her left; the singing, the prayers, the sermon--found her in a welcoming, a child-like mood.

She knelt, she sang, she listened, like one undergoing initiation, with a tender aspiring light in her eyes, and an eager mobility of expression.
Mrs.Colwood was more critical.