Thomas Wingfold. Volume II by George MacDonald

All the rest of the week his mind was full of thoughts like these, / amid which ever arose the suffering face of Helen Lingard, bringing / with it the still strengthening suspicion that behind it must lie / some oppressive, perhaps terrible secret. But he made no slightest / movement towards the discovery of it, put not a single question in / any direction for its confirmation or dissolution. He would not look / in at her windows, but what seeds of comfort he could find, he would / scatter wide, and hope that some of them might fall into her garden.

When he raised his head on the Sunday from kneeling, with heart / honest, devout, and neighbourly, in the pulpit before the sermon, / and cast his eyes round his congregation, they rested first, for one / moment and no more, upon the same pallid and troubled countenance / whose reflection had so often of late looked out from the magic / mirror of his memory; the next, they flitted across the satisfied, / healthy, handsome, clever face of her cousin, behind which plainly / sat a conscience well-to-do, in an easy chair; the third, they saw / and fled the peevish autumnal visage of Mrs. Ramshorn; the next, / they roved a little, then rested on the draper's good-humoured disc, / on the white forehead of which brooded a cloud of thoughtfulness. / Last of all they sought the free seats, and found the faces of both / the dwarfs. It was the first time he had seen Rachel's there, and it / struck him that it expressed greater suffering than he had read in / it before. She ought rather to be in bed than in church, he thought. / But the same seemed the case with her uncle's countenance also; and / with that came the conclusion that the pulpit was a wonderful / watch-tower whence to study human nature; that people lay bare more / of their real nature and condition to the man in the pulpit than / they know -- even before the sermon. Their faces have fallen into the / shape of their minds, for the church has an isolating as well as / congregating power, and no passing emotion moulds them to an / evanescent show.