St. George and St. Michael | Page 3

transfiguration passing upon the world. The vault of grey was utterly
shattered, but, gathering glory from ruin, was hurrying in rosy masses
away from under the loftier vault of blue. The ordered shocks upon
twenty fields sent their long purple shadows across the flush; and the
evening wind, like the sighing that follows departed tears, was shaking
the jewels from their feathery tops. The sunflowers and hollyhocks no
longer cowered under the tyranny of the rain, but bowed beneath the
weight of the gems that adorned them. A flame burned as upon an altar
on the top of every tree, and the very pools that lay on the distant road
had their message of light to give to the hopeless earth. As she gazed,

another hue than that of the sunset, yet rosy too, gradually flushed the
face of the maiden. She turned suddenly from the window, and left the
room, shaking a shower of diamonds from the honeysuckle as she
passed out through the porch upon the gravel walk.
Possibly her elders found her departure a relief, for although they took
no notice of it, their talk became more confidential, and was soon
mingled with many names both of rank and note, with a familiarity
which to a stranger might have seemed out of keeping with the humbler
character of their surroundings.
But when Dorothy Vaughan had passed a corner of the house to
another garden more ancient in aspect, and in some things quaint even
to grotesqueness, she was in front of a portion of the house which
indicated a far statelier past--closed and done with, like the rooms
within those shuttered windows. The inhabited wing she had left
looked like the dwelling of a yeoman farming his own land; nor did this
appearance greatly belie the present position of the family. For
generations it had been slowly descending in the scale of worldly
account, and the small portion of the house occupied by the widow and
daughter of sir Ringwood Vaughan was larger than their means could
match with correspondent outlay. Such, however, was the character of
lady Vaughan, that, although she mingled little with the great families
in the neighbourhood, she was so much respected, that she would have
been a welcome visitor to most of them.
The reverend Mr. Matthew Herbert was a clergyman from the Welsh
border, a man of some note and influence, who had been the personal
friend both of his late relative George Herbert and of the famous Dr.
Donne. Strongly attached to the English church, and recoiling with
disgust from the practices of the puritans--as much, perhaps, from
refinement of taste as abhorrence of schism--he had never yet fallen
into such a passion for episcopacy as to feel any cordiality towards the
schemes of the archbishop. To those who knew him his silence
concerning it was a louder protest against the policy of Laud than the
fiercest denunciations of the puritans. Once only had he been heard to
utter himself unguardedly in respect of the primate, and that was
amongst friends, and after the second glass permitted of his cousin
George. 'Tut! laud me no Laud,' he said. 'A skipping bishop is worse
than a skipping king.' Once also he had been overheard murmuring to

himself by way of consolement, 'Bishops pass; the church remains.' He
had been a great friend of the late sir Ringwood; and although the
distance from his parish was too great to be travelled often, he seldom
let a year go by without paying a visit to his friend's widow and
daughter.
Turning her back on the cenotaph of their former greatness, Dorothy
dived into a long pleached alley, careless of the drip from overhead,
and hurrying through it came to a circular patch of thin grass, rounded
by a lofty hedge of yew-trees, in the midst of which stood what had
once been a sun-dial. It mattered little, however, that only the stump of
a gnomon was left, seeing the hedge around it had grown to such a
height in relation to the diameter of the circle, that it was only for a
very brief hour or so in the middle of a summer's day, when, of all
periods, the passage of Time seems least to concern humanity, that it
could have served to measure his march. The spot had, indeed, a
time-forsaken look, as if it lay buried in the bosom of the past, and the
present had forgotten it.
Before emerging from the alley, she slackened her pace, half-stopped,
and, stooping a little in her tucked-up skirt, threw a bird-like glance
around the opener space; then stepping into it, she looked up to the
little disc of sky, across which the clouds, their roses already withered,
sailed dim and grey once more, while behind