As soon as I am established--almost sooner, perhaps--I turn my eyes in search of Mr.Musgrave.I know perfectly where to look for him, as he drew a plan of Tempest church and the relative position of our sittings, with the point of his stick on the gravel in the gardens close to the Zwinger at Dresden, while we sat under the trees by the little pool, feeding the pert sparrows and the intimate cock-chaffinch that resort thither.

He is not there! Barbara may be crowned with any abomination, in the way of a bonnet, that ever entered into the grotesque imagination of a milliner to conceive--coal-scuttle, cottage, spoon--for all that it matters.

The organ strikes up, a file of chorister-boys in dirty surplices--Tempest is a more pretentious church than ours--and a brace of clergy enter.

All through the Confession I gape about with vacant inattention--at the grimy whiteness of the choir; at the back of the organist's head; at the parson, a mealy-mouthed fledgling, who, with his finger on his place in the prayer to prevent his losing it, is taking a stealthy inventory of my charms.
Suddenly I hear the door, which has been for some time silent, creak again in opening.

Footsteps sound along the aisle.