Page:Life's little ironies (1894).pdf/100

went to the usual week-day service in Melchester cathedral. In crossing the close through the fog she again pereeived him who had interested her the previous evening, gazing up thoughtfully at the high-piled architecture of the nave; and as soon as she had taken bar seat he entered and sat down in a stall opposite hers.

He did not particularly heed her; but Mrs Harnham was continually occupying her eyes with him, and wondered more than ever what had attracted him in her unfledged maid-servant. The miatress was almost as unaccustomed as the maiden herself to the end-of-the-age young man, or she might have wondered less, Raye, having looked about him awhile, left abraptly, without regard to the service that was proceeding; and Mrs. Harnham —lonely, impressionable creature that she was—took no further interest in praising the Lord. She wished she had married a London man who knew the subtleties of love-making aa they were evidently known to him who had mistakenly caressed her hand.

The calendar at Melchester had been light, oocupying the court only a few hours; and the assizes at Casterbridge, the next county-town on the Western Cirenit, having no basiness for Raye, he had not gone thither. At the next town after that they did not open till the following Monday, trials to begin on Tuesday morning. In the natural order of things Raye would have arrived at the latter place on Monday afternoon; but it was not till the middle of Wednesday that his gown and gray wig, curled in tiers, in the beat fashion of Assyrian bass-reliefs, were