[A Laodicean by Thomas Hardy]@TWC D-Link bookA Laodicean BOOK THE THIRD 41/134
But not to be chosen as architect now was to be rejected in both kinds. IV. It was the Sunday following the funeral of Mrs.Havill, news of whose death had been so unexpectedly brought to her husband at the moment of his exit from Stancy Castle.
The minister, as was his custom, improved the occasion by a couple of sermons on the uncertainty of life.
One was preached in the morning in the old chapel of Markton; the second at evening service in the rural chapel near Stancy Castle, built by Paula's father, which bore to the first somewhat the relation of an episcopal chapel-of-ease to the mother church. The unscreened lights blazed through the plate-glass windows of the smaller building and outshone the steely stars of the early night, just as they had done when Somerset was attracted by their glare four months before.
The fervid minister's rhetoric equalled its force on that more romantic occasion: but Paula was not there.
She was not a frequent attendant now at her father's votive building.
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