CHAPTER II.

So it was on Sunday morning that Mrs. Primrose made her first appearance in the parish. It was a bright and beautiful morning, and all the leading families went to church in force. Mr. Mackenzie drove from Darriwell in his large waggonette, bringing his housekeeper and half a dozen servants; and, though early in his pew (which was at the top of the church and at right angles to the parsonage pew), found it occupied by people who had been ousted from their own, waiting to see the new curate and the new curate's wife. The former, of course, was expected to be the great attraction. It had become generally known that there was a Mrs. as well as a Mr. Primrose, but until they saw her she did not count for much.

Mr. Primrose came in first, as the organ was playing, at the archdeacon's heels, and went to kneel down in the little chancel. He looked very nice indeed, in his well-cut garments, that were all fresh and spruce, with his long, white hands and

long, delicately featured face; and the congregation thoroughly approved of him. He read the lessons in a pleasant, gentlemanly voice, and, though his sermon was not more original or profound than sermons usually are, his language was correct and chaste, and his sentiments all that could be desired. The impression that he made was entirely satisfactory, save in so far as his fragile appearance and a suspicious cough suggested some physical unfitness for that rough bush-work which he was specially engaged to attend to. But, interesting as he was, he was of little consequence compared with his wife. When Mrs. Primrose was ushered into church by Mrs. Brown through the vestry door-in full view of the second largest congregation that had ever assembled within those walls-every eye was turned upon her, and she created an instant and allpervading sensation, which survived throughout the service, and threw the new curate, sermon and all, into the shade.

She was a slim and girlish creature, with a charming, bright-eyed face-really a remarkably pretty young woman, as the dullest could see. But it was not her beauty that made her such a surprise and curiosity to these bush-folks; it was her step and air—an air of distinction and repose,

which was quite unaffected by the ordeal she was supposed to be passing through; and it was her dress, the cut and quality of which was such as to make every woman in the church look dowdy. It was not a rich dress, nor gay in colour, but even the men could dimly recognise its superiority to those that were brought in contact with it. The ladies saw it and felt it in a moment; the mintstamp of the first-class London dressmaker was patent to their more instructed intelligence. And such a bonnet it was that crowned the perfect costume!—a little fluffy thing, made of no one knew what, but nestling to her graceful head as if it had grown there. If this was the curate's wife, she was an entirely new type (to Wooroona), and patently destined to make a mark of some sort upon the history of the parish. So the leading families. instinctively surmised, and their instinct did not mislead them.

Mr. Mackenzie sat within arm's length of her, and the impression upon him was very strong. He was a man of the world, and he saw in her, if not a woman of the world-and she was overyoung to be that yet-at least one who knew that there was such a place, and something of its constitution and dimensions. This was a refreshing discovery. Her dress he did not take much notice

of-at any rate, he could not have described even so much as its colour had he been asked to do so; he felt it rather than saw it-inhaled its fine harmonies like a perfume, and wondered how the Miss Browns, seated one on either side of her, could make such guys of themselves: He was negatively conscious of the perfections of the young matron's costume by an entirely new perception of crude tastelessness in those of the girls, who were in the very van of fashion, as of modern culture generally, in this place, and whose style had hitherto rather pleased him than not. He did not study Mrs. Primrose in detail he did not care how she or her garments were made up; he only judged by the result, which charmed him. He stood before her his seat facing the east, while hers was on a line with the north wall-with grave eyes either on his book or abstractedly fixed upon the window over her head; but he bestowed upon her a concentrated and unswerving attention, which would have flattered her very much had she known of it. And if she did not know of it, she probably made a good guess, for it was the sort of thing she was accustomed to. Very modest and demure she looked, with her pretty eyes also bent upon her book, and her sweet little mouth, between the delicate but decided nose and the

equally delicate and decided chin, reverently composed; but, all the same, she was aware, the instant she entered the church, that there was at least one "presentable" man in the congregation, and she maintained an interest in him throughout the service, as he did in her. For his part, he neither knew nor cared how the lessons were read, nor what the sermon was about-Jack Primrose was superseded altogether as an object of curiosity and criticism; but, for her part, she was able to regard them both intelligently, and all else that went on around her. Considering the short time she had been in Wooroona, she reckoned up with tolerable accuracy the comforts and discomforts that were likely to attend her residence in that place; and in the first category she placed Colin Mackenzie, while still ignorant of his name, and in the second she placed Mrs. Brown, while her acquaintance with that lady was only ten minutes old.

Mrs. Primrose, though born to be an important person, was nobody to speak of from the social point of view. Her father was a medical man in an English county town, and she was the fourth of a family of children far too large to admit of any endowment of the daughters in the father's lifetime, over and above a comfortable trousseau and