On one side of the house lay a tiny orchard, and the windows of the living room looked out upon a mist of pink and white apple blooms.

The fragrance of the blossoms had been in the room, but could not prevail against the odor of tobacco and rum lately introduced by the master of the house and minister of the parish.

Audrey, sitting beside a table which had been drawn in front of the window, turned her face aside, and was away, sense and soul, out of the meanly furnished room into the midst of the great bouquets of bloom, with the blue between and above.
Darden, walking up and down, with his pipe in his mouth, and the tobacco smoke curling like an aureole around his bullet head, glanced toward the window.
"When you have written that which I have told you to write, say so, Audrey," he commanded.

"Don't sit there staring at nothing!" Audrey came back to the present with a start, took up a pen, and drew the standish nearer.

"'Answer of Gideon Darden, Minister of Fair View Parish, in Virginia, to the several Queries contained in my Lord Bishop of London's Circular Letter to the Clergy in Virginia,'" she read, and poised her pen in air.
"Read out the questions," ordered Darden, "and write my answer to each in the space beneath.