On Sunday morning they all went to church, including Beatrice.  It was a bare little church, and the congregation was small.  Mr. Granger went through the service with about as much liveliness as a horse driving a machine.  He ground it out, prayers, psalms, litany, lessons, all in the same depressing way, till Geoffrey felt inclined to go to sleep, and then took to watching Beatrice’s sweet face instead.  He wondered what made her look so sad.  Hers was always a sad face when in repose, that he knew, but to-day it was particularly so, and what was more, she looked worried as well as sad.  Once or twice he saw her glance at Mr. Davies, who was sitting opposite, the solitary occupant of an enormous pew, and he thought that there was apprehension in her look.  But Mr. Davies did not return the glance.  To judge from his appearance nothing was troubling his mind.

Indeed, Geoffrey studying him in the same way that he instinctively studied everybody whom he met, thought that he had never before seen a man who looked quite so ox-like and absolutely comfortable.  And yet he never was more completely at fault.  The man seemed stolid and cold indeed, but it was the coldness of a volcano.  His heart was a-fire.  All the human forces in him, all the energies of his sturdy life, had concentrated themselves in a single passion for the woman who was so near and yet so far from him.  He had never drawn upon the store, had never frittered his heart away.  This woman, strange and unusual as it may seem, was absolutely the first whose glance or voice had ever stirred his blood.  His passion for her had grown slowly; for years it had been growing, ever since the grey-eyed girl on the brink of womanhood had conducted him to his castle home.  It was no fancy, no light desire to pass with the year which brought it.  Owen had little imagination, that soil from which loves spring with the rank swiftness of a tropic bloom to fade at the first chill breath of change.  His passion was an unalterable fact.  It was rooted like an oak on our stiff English soil, its fibres wrapped his heart and shot his being through, and if so strong a gale should rise that it must fall, then he too would be overthrown.

For years now he had thought of little else than Beatrice.  To win her he would have given all his wealth, ay, thrice over, if that were possible.  To win her, to know her his by right and his alone, ah, that would be heaven!  His blood quivered and his mind grew dim when he thought of it.  What would it be to see her standing by him as she stood now, and know that she was his wife!  There is no form of passion more terrible than this.  Its very earthiness makes it awful.