Holy orders Author:Marie Corelli Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: it persistently recurred to him and forced itself upon his pained attention. He was ashamed of it, and angry with himself for giving way to what he called a ' we... more »akness'—but nevertheless the question rang in his ears with haunting persistence—" Are you going to spend all your life in Shad- brook?" All his life! He was only thirty-five—and probably— taking all the chances for and against, there were several years before him. Long years too—for in Shadbrook the time lagged on with a most extraordinary slowness. Yet who could wish for a more peaceful way of passing the days than the work of ' curing' Shadbrook souls ? There was no prettier old village church in England than the one in which it was his duty to officiate, and as for his personal environment, there was no better house anywhere than his— no lovelier wife—no more beautiful child. What more then could he desire? How was it that a sudden cloud—small yet perfectly perceptible—had crept into his sky? He asked himself the question many times—angrily and with a keen self-reproach. But he kept his own counsel as to his inward condition of mind—and not even to that dazzling creature of sunshine and gossamer, his adored Azalea, whose bewildering fairy beauty and gayety of heart were a perpetual amazement to his mind, did he confide what he gravely decided was ' a matter between himself and God.' On this day of dull rain and sweeping mist, when even the Vicarage garden looked dreary, the spring not having yet ' made up its mind as to whether or no it meant finally to dethrone a long and obstinately reigning winter, and when Shadbrook in both its ancient and modern parts presented its worst and most forlorn aspect, there was something more than usually depressing in the atmosphere, and the Reverend Richard felt it poignantly. ...« less