mark the difference! These men come up to time every Sunday morning: in their places they sit with their pommelled wives and hungry children, with a decent coat, and a clean face, and steady legs—respectable. Let them commit one tithe of these misdemeanours and stop away from worship, and they are outcasts.
Under the pulpit, in the square red-curtained pew of the Vashers, sits Silvia, Paul Vasher's wife. I know she is there, though I have not glanced once in her direction. But now, as Mr. Skipworth closes his book and we all rise, I look across the church and we meet each other's eyes fully and fairly, face to face at last. The dawning look of triumph wavers and dies before the cold steady scorn of mine. Ay, Madam Silvia! though you stand there, his wife, and I stand here lonely, forsaken—though your words have come true and you have got your heart's desire—you are a cheat, an interloper: it is I who am conqueror, not you. You stole Paul's body and name from me: but his heart, his love, his life are mine, and you know it. He will not even be seen by your side on this your first appearance among his own people. All this my eyes say to her as we look upon each other, and then we kneel down. At the gate Mrs. Vasher's carriage awaits her, superbly appointed, as are all her surroundings at all times; and I think to myself of how small I should feel in spite of all the frippery and bravery of it if I had to get into it and drive away alone.
"Handsomest woman I ever saw in my life;" I hear the governor's voice saying as we cross the churchyard behind him; "and Vasher ought to have been with her."
I smile to myself as I listen. Will not every man who looks on Silvia's face condemn Paul as a selfish, cold-hearted wretch for his indifference? Talk about "Beauty being only skin deep," "Handsome is as handsome does," and the rest of these worthless, lying sayings that man never spoke, which are rather the embodied spite of generations of plain women, who, finding the grapes denied
