Helbeck of Bannisdale — Volume II

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

CHAPTER III

It was on the stroke of midnight when the message from Braeside was handed to Mr. Helbeck by the sleepy station-master, who had been dragged by that gentleman's urgency from his first slumbers in the neat cottage beside the line.

The master of Bannisdale thrust the slip of paper into his pocket, and stood an instant with bent head, as though reflecting.

"Thank you, Mr. Brough," he said at last. "I will not ask you to do anything more. Good-night."

Rightful reward passed, and Mr. Helbeck left the station. Outside, his pony cart stood tied to the station railing.

Before entering it he debated with himself whether he should drive on to the town of Marsland, get horses there and then, and make for Braeside at once.

He could get there in about a couple of hours. And then?

To search a sleeping town for Miss Fountain—would that mend matters?

A carriage arriving at two o'clock in the morning—the inn awakened—no lady there, perhaps—for what was to prevent her having found decent shelter in some quite other quarter? Was he to make a house-to-house visitation at that hour? How wise! How quenching to the gossip that must in any case get abroad!

He turned the pony homewards.

Augustina, all shawls and twitching, opened the door to him. A message had been sent on to her an hour before to the effect that Miss Fountain had missed her train, and was not likely to arrive that night.

"Oh, Alan!—where is she?"

"I got a telegram through to the station-master. Don't be anxious, Augustina. I asked him to direct her to the inn. The old White Hart, they say, has passed into new management and is quite comfortable. She may arrive by the first train—7.20. Anyway I shall meet it."

Augustina pursued him with fretful inquiries and surmises. Helbeck, pale and gloomy, threw himself down on the settle, and produced the story of the accident, so far as the garrulous and incoherent Polly had enabled him to understand it. Fresh wails on Augustina's part. What a horrible, horrible thing! Why, of course the child was terribly upset—hurt perhaps—or she would never have been so foolish about the trains. And now one could not even be sure that she had found a place to sleep in! She would come home a wreck—a simple wreck. Helbeck moved uneasily.

"She was not hurt, according to Miss Mason."

"I suppose young Mason saw her off?"

"I suppose so."

"What were they all about, to make such a blunder?"

Helbeck shrugged his shoulders, and at last he succeeded in quieting his sister, by dint of a resolute suppression of all but the most ordinary and comforting suggestions.

"Well, after all, thank goodness, Laura has a great deal of common sense—she always had," said Mrs. Fountain, with a clearing countenance.

"Of course. She will be here, I have little doubt, before you are ready for your breakfast. It is unlucky, but it should not disturb your night's rest. Please go to bed." With some difficulty he drove her there.

Augustina retired, but it was to spend a broken and often tearful night. Alan might say what he liked—it was all most disagreeable. Why!—would the inn take her in? Mrs. Fountain had often been told that an inn, a respectable inn, required a trunk as well as a person. And Laura had not even a bag—positively not a hand-bag. A reflection which was the starting-point of a hundred new alarms, under which poor Mrs. Fountain tossed till the morning.

* * * * *

Meanwhile Helbeck went to his study. It was nearly one o'clock when he entered it, but the thought of sleep never occurred to him. He took out of his pocket the telegram from Braeside, re-read it, and destroyed it.

So Mason was with her—for of course it was Mason. Not one word of such a conjunction was to be gathered from the sister. She had clearly supposed that Laura would start alone and arrive alone. Or was she in the plot? Had Mason simply arranged the whole "mistake," jumped into the same train with her, and confronted her at the junction?

Helbeck moved blindly up and down the room, traversed by one of those storms of excitement to which the men of his stock were liable. The thought of those two figures leaving the Braeside station together at midnight roused in him a madness half jealousy, half pride. He saw the dainty head, the cloud of gold under the hat, the pretty gait, the girlish waist, all the points of delicacy or charm he had worshipped through his pain these many weeks. To think of them in the mere neighbourhood of that coarse and sensual lad had always been profanation. And now who would not be free to talk, to spatter her girlish name? The sheer unseemliness of such a kinship!—such a juxtaposition.

If he could only know the true reason of that persistency she had shown about the expedition, in the face of Augustina's wailings, and his own silence? She had been dull—Heaven knows she had been dull at Bannisdale, for these two months. On every occasion of his return from those intermediate absences to which he had forced himself, he had perceived that she drooped, that she was dumbly at war with the barriers that shut her youth away from change and laughter, and the natural amusements, flatteries and courtings that wait, or should wait, on sweet-and-twenty. More than once he had realised the fever pulsing through the girl's unrest. Of course she was dissatisfied and starved. She was not of the sort that accepts the rôle of companion or sick nurse without a murmur. What could he do—he, into whose being she had crept with torturing power—he who could not marry her even if she should cease to hate him—who could only helplessly put land and distance between them? And then, who knows what a girl plans, to what she will stoop, out of the mere ebullience and rush of her youth—with what haloes she will surround even the meanest heads? Her blood calls her—not this man or that! She takes her decisions—behind that veil of mystery that masks the woman at her will. And who knows—-who can know? A mother, perhaps. Not Augustina—not he—nor another.

Groans broke from him. In vain he scourged himself and the vileness of his own thoughts. In vain he said to himself, "All her instincts, her preferences, are pure, guileless, delicate—I could swear it, I, who have watched her every look and motion." Temper?—yes. Caprice?—yes. A hundred immaturities and rawnesses?—yes! but at the root of all, the most dazzling, the most convincing maidenliness. Not the down-dropt eyes, the shrinking modesties of your old Christian or Catholic types—far from it. But something that, as you dwelt upon it, seemed to make doubt a mere folly.

And yet his very self-assurances, his very protests, left him in torment. There is something in the Catholic discipline on points of sex-relation that perhaps weakens a man's instinctive confidence in women. Evil and its varieties, in this field, are pressed upon his thoughts perpetually with a scholastic fulness so complete, a deductive frankness so compelling, that nothing stands against the process. He sees corruption everywhere—dreads it everywhere. There is no part of its empire, or its action, that his imagination is allowed to leave in shadow. It is the confessional that works. The devout Catholic sees all the world sub specie peccati. The flesh seems to him always ready to fall—the devil always at hand.

—Little restless proud creature! What a riddle she has been to him all the time—flitting about the house so pale and inaccessible, so silent, too, in general, since that night when he had wrestled with her in the drawing-room. One moment of fresh battle between them there has been—in the park—on the subject of old Scarsbrook. Preposterous!—that she should think for one moment she could be allowed to confess herself—and so bring all the low talk of the neighbourhood about her ears. He could hear the old man's plaintive cogitations over the strange experience which had blanched his hair and beard and brought him a visible step nearer to his end. "Soombody towd my owd woman tudther day, Misther Helbeck, at yoong Mason o' t' Browhead had been i' th' park that neet. Mappen tha'll tell me it was soom gell body he'd been coortin. Noa!—he doan't gaa about wi' the likes o' thattens! Theer was never a soun' ov her feet, Misther Helbeck! She gaed ower t' grass like a bit cloud i' summer, an she wor sma' an nesh as a wagtail on t' steëans. I ha seen aw maks o' gells, but this one bet 'em aw." And after that, to think of her pouring herself out in impetuous explanation to the old peasant and his wife! It had needed a strong will to stop her. "Mr. Helbeck, I wish to tell the truth, and I ought to tell it! And your arguments have no weight with me whatever."

But he had made them prevail. And she had not punished him too severely.
A little more pallor, a little more silence for a time—that was all!

A score of poignant recollections laid hold upon him as he paced the night away. That music in the summer dusk—the softness of her little face—the friendliness—first, incredible friendliness!—of her lingering hand. Next morning he had banished himself to Paris, on a Catholic mission devised for the purpose. He had gone, torn with passion—gone, in the spirit that drives the mystic through all the forms of self-torture that religious history records—ad majorem Dei gloriam. He had returned to find her frozen and hostile as before—all wilfulness with Augustina—all contradiction with himself. The Froswick plan was already on foot—and he had furthered it—out of a piteous wish to propitiate her, to make her happy. What harm could happen to her? The sister would go with her and bring her back. Why must he always play the disobliging and tyrannical host? Could he undo the blood-relationship between her and the Masons? If for mere difficulty and opposition's sake there were really any fancy in her mind for this vulgar lad, perhaps after all it were the best thing to let her see enough of him for disenchantment! There are instincts that can be trusted.

Such had been the thoughts of the morning. They do not help him through these night hours, when, in spite of all the arguments of common sense, he recurs again and again to the image of her as alone, possibly defenceless, in Mason's company.

Suddenly he perceived that the light was changing. He put his lamp out and threw back the curtain. A pale gold was already creeping up the east. The strange yew forms in the garden began to emerge from the night. A huge green lion showed his jaw, his crown, his straight tail quivering in the morning breeze; a peacock nodded stiffly on its pedestal; a great H that had been reared upon its post supports before Dryden's death stood black against the morning sky, and everywhere between the clumsy crowding forms were roses, straggling and dew-drenched, or wallflowers in a June wealth of bloom, or peonies that made a crimson flush amid the yews. The old garden, so stiff and sad through all the rest of the year, was in its moment of glory.

Helbeck opened one of the lattices of the oriel, and stood there gazing. Six months before there had been a passionate oneness between him and his inheritance, between his nature and the spirit of his race. Their privations and persecutions, their faults, their dumb or stupid fidelities, their very vices even, had been the source in him of a constant and secret affection. For their vices came from their long martyrdom, and their martyrdom from their faith. New influences had worked upon himself, influences linking him with a more European and militant Catholicism, as compared with that starved and local type from which he sprang. But through it all his family pride, his sense of ancestry with all its stimulus and obligations, had but grown. He was proud of calamity, impoverishment, isolation; they were the scars on pilgrims' feet—honour-marks left by the oppressor. His bare and rained house, his melancholy garden, where not a bed or path had suffered change since the man who planned them had refused to comply with the Test Act, and so forfeited his seat in Parliament; his dwindling resources, his hermit's life and fare—were they not all joy to him? For years he had desired to be a Jesuit; the obligations of his place and name had stood in the way. And short of being a son of St. Ignatius, he exulted in being a Helbeck—the more stripped and despised, the more happy—with those maimed generations behind him, and the triumph of his faith, his faith and theirs, gilding the mind's horizon.

And now after just four months of temptation he stands there, racked with desire for this little pagan creature, this girl without a single Christian sentiment or tradition, the child of an infidel father, herself steeped in denial and cradled in doubt, with nothing meekly feminine about her on which to press new stamps—and knowing well why she denies, if not personally and consciously, at least by a kind of inheritance.

The tangled garden, slowly yielding its splendours to the morning light, the walls of the old house, springing sheer from the grass like the native rock itself—for the first time he feels a gulf between himself and them. His ideals waver in the soul's darkened air; the breath of passion drives them to and fro.

With an anguished "Domine, exaudi!" he snatched himself from the window, and leaving the room he crossed the hall, where the Tudor badges on the ceiling, the arms of "Elizabetha Regina" above the great hearth were already clear in the cold dawn, and made his way as noiselessly as possible to the chapel.

Those strange figures on the wall had already shaken the darkness from them. Wing rose on wing, halo on halo, each face turning in a mystic passion to the altar and its steadfast light.

Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Filius Patris, qui tollis peccata mundi, suscipe deprecationem nostram. Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris, miserere nobis.

In prayer and passionate meditation he passed through much of the time that had still to be endured. But meanwhile he knew well, in his sinful and shrinking mind, that, for that night at least, he was only praying because he could do nothing else—nothing that would give him Laura, or deliver him from the fears that shook his inmost being.

* * * * *

A little before six Helbeck left the chapel. He must bathe and dress—then to the farm for the pony cart. If she did not arrive by the first train he would get a horse at Marsland and drive on to Braeside. But first he must take care to leave a message for Mrs. Denton, whose venomous face, as she stood listening the night before to his story of Miss Fountain's mishaps, recurred to him disagreeably.

The housekeeper would not be stirring yet, perhaps, for an hour. He went back to his study to write her some short directions covering the hours of his possible absence.

The room, as he entered it, struck him as musty and airless, in spite of the open lattice. Instinctively, before writing, he went to throw another window wide. In rushed a fresh rose-scented air, and he leant forward an instant, letting its cool current flow through him.

Something white caught his eye beneath the window.

* * * * *

Laura slowly raised her head.

Had she fallen asleep in her fatigue?

Helbeck, bending over her, saw her eyes unclose. She looked at him as she had never looked before—with a sad and spiritual simplicity as though she had waked in a world where all may tell the truth, and there are no veils left between man and woman.

Her light hat fell back from her brow; her delicate pinched features, with the stamp of suffering upon them, met his look so sweetly—so frankly!

"I was very tired," she said, in a new voice, a voice of appealing trust. "And there was no door open."

She raised her small hand, and he took it in his, trembling through all his man's strength.

"I was just starting to see if the train had brought you."

"No—I walked—a great part of the way, at least. Will you help me up?
It's very foolish, but I can't stand."

She rose, tottering, and leaning heavily upon his hand. She drew her own across her forehead.

"It's only hunger. And I had some milk. Was Augustina in a great way?"

"She was anxious, of course. We both were."

"Yes! it was stupid. But look—" she clung to him. "Will you take me into the drawing-room, and get me some wine—before I see Augustina?"

"Lean on me."

She obeyed, and he led her in. The drawing-room door was open, and she sank into the nearest chair. As she looked up she saw the Romney lady shining from the wall in the morning sunlight. The blue-eyed beauty looked down, as though with a careless condescension, upon the pale and tattered Laura. But Laura was neither envious nor ashamed. As Helbeck left her to get wine, she lay still and white; but in the solitude of the room while he was gone, a little smile, ghostly as the dawn itself, fluttered suddenly beneath her closed lids and was gone again.

When he returned, she did her best to drink and eat what she was told. But her exhaustion became painfully apparent, and he hung over her, torn between anxiety, remorse, and the pulsations of a frantic joy, hardly to be concealed, even by him.

"Let me wake Augustina, and bring her down!"

"No—wait a little. I have been in a quarry all night, you see! That isn't—resting!"

"I tried to direct you—I managed to telegraph to the station-master; but it must have missed. I asked him to direct you to the inn."

"Oh, the inn!" She shuddered suddenly. "No, I couldn't go to the inn."

"Why—what frightened you?"

He sat down by her, speaking very gently, as one does to a child.

She was silent. His heart beat—his ear hungered for the next word.

She lifted her tired lids.

"My cousin was there—at the junction. I did not want him. I did not wish to be with him; he had no right whatever to follow me. So I sent him to the inn to ask—and I——"

"You——?"

"I hid myself in the quarry while he was gone. When he came back, he went on over the sands, calling for me—perhaps he thought I was lost in one of the bad places."

She gave a little whimsical sigh, as though it pleased her to think of the lad's possible frights and wanderings.

Helbeck bent towards her.

"And so—to avoid him——?"

She followed his eye like a child.

"I had noticed a quarry beside the line. I climbed up there—under the engine-house—and sat there till it was light. You see"—her breath fluttered—"I couldn't—I couldn't be sure—he was sober. I dare say it was ridiculous—but I was so startled—and he had no business——"

"He had given you no hint—that he wished to accompany you?"

Something drove, persecuted the man to ask it in that hoarse, shaking tone.

She did not answer. She simply looked at him, while the tears rose softly in her clear eyes. The question seemed to hurt her. Yet there was neither petulance nor evasion. She was Laura, and not Laura—the pale sprite of herself. One might have fancied her clothed already in the heavenly super-sensual body, with the pure heart pulsing visibly through the spirit frame.

Helbeck rose, closed the door softly, came back and stood before her, struggling to speak. But she intercepted him. There was a look of suffering, a frown.

"I saw a man die yesterday," she said abruptly. "Did Polly tell you?"

"I heard of the accident, and that you had stayed to comfort the child."

"It seems very heartless, but somehow as we were in the train I had almost forgotten it. I was so glad to get away from Froswick—to be coming back. And I was very tired, of course, and never dreamt of anything going wrong. Oh, no! I haven't forgotten really—I never shall forget."

She pressed her hands together shuddering. Helbeck was still silent.

But it was a silence that pierced. Suddenly she flushed deeply. The spell that held her—that strange transparency of soul—broke up.

"Naturally I was afraid lest Augustina should be anxious," she said hastily, "and lest it should be bad for her."

Helbeck knelt down beside her. She sank back in her chair, staring at him.

"You were glad to be coming back—to be coming here?" he said in his deep voice. "Is that true? Do you know that I have sat here all night—in misery?"

The struggling breath checked the answer, cheeks and lips lost every vestige of their returning red. Only her eyes spoke. Helbeck came closer. Suddenly he snatched the little form to his breast. She made one small effort to free herself, then yielded. Soul and body were too weak, the ecstasy of his touch too great.

* * * * *

"You can't love me—you can't."

She had torn herself away. They were sitting side by side; but now she would not even give him her hand. That one trembling kiss had changed their lives. But in both natures, passion was proud and fastidious from its birth; it could live without much caressing.

As she spoke, he met her gaze with a smiling emotion. The long, stern face in its grizzled setting of hair and beard had suffered a transformation that made it almost strange to her. He was like a man loosed from many bonds, and dazzled by the effects of his own will. The last few minutes had made him young again. But she looked at him wistfully once or twice, as though her fancy nursed something which had grown dear to it.

"You can't love me," she repeated; "when did you begin? You didn't love me yesterday, you know—nor the day before."

"Why do you suppose I went away the day after the ghost?" he asked her slowly.

"Because you had business, or you were tired of my very undesirable company."

"Put it as you like! Do you explain my recent absences in the same way?"

"Oh, I can't explain you!" She raised her shoulders, but her face trembled. "I never tried."

"Let me show you how. I went because you were here."

"And you were afraid—that you might love me? Was it—such a hard fate?"
She turned her head away.

"What have I to offer you?" he said passionately; "poverty—an elderly lover—a life uncongenial to you."

She slipped a hand nearer to him, but her face clouded a little.

"It's the very strangest thing in the world," she said deliberately, "that we should love each other. What can it mean? I hated you when I came, and meant to hate you. And"—she sat up and spoke with an emphasis that brought the colour back into her face—"I can never, never be a Catholic."

He looked at her gravely.

"That I understand."

"You know that I was brought up apart from religion, altogether?"

His eye saddened. Then he raised her hand and kissed it. The pitying tenderness of the action almost made her break down. But she tried to snatch her hand away.

"It was papa's doing, and I shall never blame him—never!"

"I have been in Belgium lately," he said, holding the hand close, "at a great Catholic town—Louvain—where I was educated. I went to an old priest I know, and to a Reverend Mother who has sent me Sisters once or twice, and I begged of them both—prayers for your father's soul."

She stared. The painful tears rushed into her eyes.

"I thought that—for you—that was all sure and settled long ago."

"I don't think you know much about us, little heretic! I have prayed for your father's soul at every Mass since—you remember that Rosary service in April?"

She nodded.

"And what you said to me afterwards, about the child—and doubt? I stayed long in the chapel that night. It was borne in upon me, with a certainty I shall never lose, that all was well with your poor father. Our Blessed Lord has revealed to him in that other life what an invincible ignorance hid from him here."

He spoke with a beautiful simplicity, like a man dealing with all that was most familiarly and yet sacredly real to his daily mind and thought.

She trembled. Words and ideas of the kind were still all strange and double-edged to her—suggesting on the one side the old feelings of contempt and resistance, on the other a new troubling of the waters of the heart.

She leant her brow against the back of the old sofa on which they were sitting. "And—and no prayers for me?" she said huskily.

"Dear love!—at all times—in all places—at my downsitting and mine uprising," he answered—every word an adoration.

She was silent for a moment, then she dashed the tears from her eyes.

"All the same, I shall never be a Catholic," she repeated resolutely; "and how can you marry an unbeliever?"

"My Church allows it—under certain conditions."

Her mind flew over the conditions. She had heard them named on one or two occasions during the preceding months. Then she turned away, dreading his eye.

"Suppose I am jealous of your Church and hate her?"

"No!—you will love her for my sake."

"I can't promise. There are two selves in me. All your Catholic friends—Father Leadham—the Reverend Mother—will be in despair."

She saw him wince. But he spoke firmly. "I ask only what is lawful. I am free in such a matter to choose my own path—under my conscience."

She said nothing for a little. But she pondered on all that he might be facing and sacrificing for such a marriage. Once a cloud of sudden misgiving descended upon her, as though, a bird had brushed her with its black wing. But she shook it away. Her little hand crept back to him—while her face was still hidden from him.

"I ought not to marry you—but—but I will. There—take me!—will you guide me?"

"With all my strength!"

"Will you fight me?"

He laughed. "To the best of my ability—when I must. Did I do it well—that night—about the ghost?"

She shrugged her shoulders—half laughing, half crying.

"No!—you were violent—impossible. Will you never, never let me get the upper hand?"

"How would you do it?—little atom!" He bent over her, trying to see her face, but she pressed him away from her.

"Make me afraid to mock at your beliefs!" she said passionately; "make me afraid!—there is no other way."

"Laura!"

At last she let his arms have their will. And it was time. The exhaustion which had been driven back for the moment by food and excitement returned upon her with paralysing force. Helbeck woke to a new and stronger alarm. He half led, half carried her through the hall, on the way to Augustina.

At the foot of the stairs, as Laura was making a tottering effort to climb them with Helbeck's arm round her, Mrs. Denton came out of the dining-room straight upon them. She carried a pan and brush, and had evidently just begun her morning work.

At sight of her Laura started; but Helbeck gave her no chance to withdraw herself. He turned quietly to his housekeeper, who stood transfixed.

"Good-morning, Denton. Miss Fountain has just returned, having walked most of the way from Braeside. She is very tired, as you see—let some breakfast be got ready for her at once. And let me tell you now—what I should anyway have told you a few hours later—that Miss Fountain has promised to be my wife."

He spoke with a cold dignity, scanning the woman closely. Mrs. Denton grew very white. But she dropped a curtesy in old Westmoreland fashion.

"I wish you joy, sir—and Miss Fountain, too."

Her voice was low and mumbling, but Helbeck gave her a cheerful nod.

"Thank you. I shall be downstairs again as soon as I have taken Miss
Fountain to my sister—and I, too, should be glad of some breakfast."

"He's been agate all night," said the housekeeper to herself, as she entered the study and looked at the chairs, the lamp which its master had forgotten to extinguish, the open window. "An where's she been? Who knows? I saw it from the first. It's a bewitchment—an it'll coom to noa good."

She went about her dusting with a shaking hand.

* * * * *

Augustina was not told till later in the day. When her brother, who was alone with her, had at last succeeded in making her understand that he proposed to make Laura Fountain his wife, the surprise and shock of the news was such that Mrs. Fountain was only saved from faintness by her very strongest smelling-salts.

"Alan—my dear brother! Oh! Alan—you can't have thought it out. She's her father's child, Alan, all through. How can you be happy? Why, Alan, the things she says—poor Laura!"

"She has said them," he replied.

"She can't help saying them—thinking them—it's in her. No one will ever change her. Oh! it's all so strange——"

And Augustina began to cry, silently, piteously.

Helbeck bent over her.

"Augustina!" He spoke with emotion. "If she loved, wouldn't that change her? Don't all women live by their affections? I am not worth her loving—but——"

His face shone, and spoke the rest for him.

Augustina looked at him in bewilderment. Why, it was only yesterday that Laura disliked and despised him, and that Alan hardly ever spoke when her stepdaughter was there. It was utterly incomprehensible to her. Was it another punishment from Heaven for her own wilful and sacrilegious marriage? As she thought of the new conditions and relations that were coming upon them all—the disapproval of friends, the danger to her brother's Catholic life, the transformation of her own ties to Laura, her feeble soul lost itself in fear. Secretly, she said to herself, with the natural weariness of coming age:

"Perhaps I shall die—before it happens."

BOOK IV

CHAPTER I

Augustina was sitting in the garden with Father Bowles. Their chairs were placed under a tall Scotch fir, which spread its umbrella top between them and the sun. All around, the old garden was still full and flowery. For it was mid-September, and fine weather.

Mrs. Fountain was lying on a sort of deck-chair, and had as usual a number of little invalid appliances about her. But in truth, as Father Bowles was just reflecting, she looked remarkably well. The influences of her native air seemed so far to have brought Dr. MacBride's warnings to naught. Or was it the stimulating effect of her brother's engagement? At any rate she talked more, and with more vigour; she was more liable to opinions of her own; and in these days there was that going on at Bannisdale which provoked opinion in great plenty.

"Miss Fountain is not at home?" remarked the old priest. An afternoon gossip with Mrs. Fountain had become a very common feature of his recent life.

"Laura has gone, I believe, to meet my brother at the lodge. He has been over to Braeside on business."

"He is selling some land there?"

"I hope so!" said Augustina, with fervour.

"It is time indeed that our poor orphans were housed," said Father Bowles naïvely. "For the last three months some of our dear nuns have been sleeping in the passages."

Augustina sighed.

"It seems a little hard that there is nobody but Alan to do anything! And how long is it to go on?"

The priest bent forward.

"You mean——?"

"How long will my stepdaughter let it go on?" said Augustina impatiently.
"She will be mistress here directly."

The eyes of her companion flinched, as though something had struck him.
But he hastened to say:

"Do not let us doubt, my dear lady, that the soul of Miss Fountain will sooner or later be granted to our prayers."

"But there is not the smallest sign of it," cried Augustina. And she in her turn bent towards her companion, unable to resist the temptation of these priestly ears so patiently inclined to her. "And yet, Father, she isn't happy!—though Alan gives way to her in everything. It's not a bit like a girl in love—you'd expect her to be thinking about her clothes, and the man, and her housekeeping at least—if she won't think about—well! those other things that we should all wish her to think about. While we were at the sea, and Alan used to come down every now and then to stay near us in lodgings, it was all right. They never argued or disputed; they were out all day; and really I thought my brother began to look ten years younger. But now—since we have come back—of course my brother has all his affairs, and all his Church business to look after, and Laura doesn't seem so contented—nearly. It would be different if she cared for any of his interests—but I often think she hates the orphans! She is really naughty about them. And then the Sisters—oh dear!"—Augustina gave a worried sigh—"I don't think the Reverend Mother can have managed it at all well."

Father Bowles said that he understood both from the Reverend Mother and
Sister Angela that they had made very great efforts to secure Miss
Fountain's friendly opinion.

"Well, it didn't succeed, that's all I can say," replied Augustina fretfully. "And I don't know what they'll do after November."

November had been fixed for the marriage, which was to take place at
Cambridge.

Father Bowles hung his hands between his knees and looked down upon them in gentle meditation.

"Your brother seems still very much attached——"

"Attached!"

Augustina was silent. In reality she spent half her days in secretly marvelling how such a good man as Alan could allow himself to be so much in love.

"If only someone had ever warned me that this might happen—when I was coming back to live here," she said, in her most melancholy voice; and clasping her thin hands she looked sadly down the garden paths, while her poor head shook and jerked under the influence of the thoughts—so far from agreeable!—with which it was filled.

There was a little silence. Then Father Bowles broke it.

"And our dear Squire does nothing to try and change Miss Fountain's mind towards the Church?" he asked, looking vaguely round the corner all the time.

Nothing—so Augustina declared.

"I say to him—'Alan, give her some books.' Why, they always give people books to read! 'Or get Father Leadham to talk to her.' What's the good of a man like Father Leadham—so learned, and such manners!—if he can't talk to a girl like Laura? But no, Alan won't. He says we must let her alone—and wait God's time!—And there's no altering him, as you know."

Father Bowles pondered a little, then said with a mild perplexity:

"I find, in my books, that a great many instances are recorded of holy wives—or even betrothed—who were instrumental under God in procuring the conversion of their unbelieving husbands—or—or lovers, if I may use such a word to a lady. But I cannot discover any of an opposite nature. There was the pious Nonna, for instance, the mother of the great St. Gregory Nazianzen, who converted her husband so effectually that he became a bishop, and died at the age of ninety."

"What became of her?" inquired Augustina hastily.

The priest hesitated.

"It is a very curious case—and, I understand, much disputed. Some people suppose that St. Gregory was born after his father became a bishop, and many infidel writers have made use of the story for their own malicious purposes. But if it was so, the Church may have allowed such a departure from her law, at a time of great emergency and in a scarcity of pastors. But the most probable thing is that nothing of the kind happened—" he drew himself up with decision—"that the father of St. Gregory had separated from his wife before he became a bishop—and that those writers who record the birth of St. Gregory during the episcopate of his father were altogether mistaken."

"At any rate, I really don't see how it helps us!" said Augustina.

Father Bowles looked a little crestfallen.

"There is one other case that occurs to me," he said timidly. "It is that of St. Amator, Bishop of Auxerre. He was desired by his parents to marry Martha, a rich young lady of his neighbourhood. But he took her aside, and pressed upon her the claims of the ascetic life with such fervour that she instantly consented to renounce the world with him. She therefore went into a convent; and he received the tonsure, and was in due time made Bishop of Auxerre."

"Well, I assure you, I should be satisfied with a good deal less than that in Laura's case!" said Augustina, half angry, half laughing.

Father Bowles said no more. His mind was a curious medley of scraps from many quarters—from a small shelf of books that held a humble place in his little parlour, from the newspapers, and from the few recollections still left to him of his seminary training. He was one of the most complacently ignorant of men; and it had ceased to trouble him that even with Augustina he was no longer of importance.

Mrs. Fountain made him welcome, indeed, not only because he was one of the chief gossips of the neighbourhood, but because she was able to assume towards him certain little airs of superiority that no other human being allowed her. With him, she was the widow of a Cambridge scholar, who had herself breathed the forbidden atmosphere of an English University; she prattled familiarly of things and persons wherewith the poor priest, in his provincial poverty and isolation, could have no acquaintance; she let him understand that by her marriage she had passed into hell-flame regions of pure intellect, that little parish priests might denounce but could never appreciate. He bore it all very meekly; he liked her tea and talk; and at bottom the sacerdotal pride, however hidden and silent, is more than a match for any other.

Augustina lay for a while in a frowning and flushed silence, with a host of thoughts, of the most disagreeable and heterogeneous sort, scampering through her mind. Suddenly she said:

"I don't think Sister Angela should talk as she does! She told me when she heard of the engagement that she could not help thinking of St. Philip Neri, who was attacked by three devils near the Colosseum, because they were enraged by the success of his holy work among the young men of Rome. I asked her whether she meant to call Laura a devil! And she coloured, and got very confused, and said it was so sad that Mr. Helbeck, of all people, should marry an unbelieving wife—and we were taught to believe that all temptations came from evil spirits."

"Sister Angela means well, but she expresses herself very unwarrantably," said the priest sharply. "Now the Reverend Mother tells me that she expected something of the kind, almost from the first."

"Why didn't she tell me?" cried Augustina. "But I don't really think she did, Father. She makes a mistake. How could she? But the dear Reverend Mother—well! you know—though she is so wonderfully humble, she doesn't like anybody to be wiser than she. And I can hardly bear it—I know she puts it all down to some secret sin on Alan's part. She spends a great part of the night—that she told me—in praying for him in the chapel."

Father Bowles sighed.

"I believe that our dear Reverend Mother has often and often prayed for a good wife for Mr. Helbeck. Miss Fountain, no doubt, is a very attractive and accomplished young lady, but—"

"Oh, don't, please, go through the 'buts,'" said Mrs. Fountain with a shrug of despair. "I don't know what's to become of us all—I don't indeed. It isn't as though Laura could hold her tongue. Since we came back I can see her father in her all day long. I had a talk with the Bishop yesterday," she said in a lower voice, looking plaintively at her companion.

He bent forward.

"Oh! he's just, broken-hearted. He can hardly bring himself to speak to Alan about it at all. Of course, Alan will get his dispensation for the marriage. They can't refuse it to him when they give it to so many others. But!"—she threw up her hands—"the Bishop asked me if Laura had been really baptized. I told him there was no doubt at all about it—though it was a very near thing. But her mother did insist that once. And it appears that if she hadn't——"

She looked interrogatively at the priest.

"The marriage could not have taken place," he said slowly. "No Catholic priest could have celebrated it, at least. There would have been a diriment impediment."

"I thought so," said Augustina excitedly, "though I wasn't sure. There are so many dispensations nowadays."

"Ah, but not in such cases as that," said the priest, with an unconscious sigh that rather startled his companion.

Then with a sudden movement he pounced upon something on the further side of the table, nearly upsetting the tea-tray. Augustina exclaimed.

"I beg your pardon," he said humbly; "it was only a nasty fly." And he dropped the flattened creature on the grass.

Both relapsed into a melancholy silence. But several times during the course of it Mrs. Fountain looked towards her companion as though on the point of saying something—then rebuked herself and refrained.

But when the priest had taken his leave, and Mrs. Fountain was left alone in the garden with the flowers and the autumn wind, her thoughts were painfully concerned with quite another part of the episcopal conversation from that which she had reported to Father Bowles. What right had the Bishop or anyone else to speak of "stories" about Laura? Of course, the dear Bishop had been very kind and cautious. He had said emphatically that he did not believe the stories—nor that other report that Mr. Helbeck's sudden proposal of marriage to Miss Fountain had been brought about by his chivalrous wish to protect the endangered name of a young girl, his guest, to whom he had become unwisely attached.

But why should there be "stories," and what did it all mean?

That unlucky Froswick business—and young Mason? But what had Mason to do with it—on that occasion? As Augustina understood, he had seen the child off from Froswick by the 8.20 train—and there was an end of him in the matter. As for the rest of that adventure, no doubt it was foolish of Laura to sit in the quarry till daylight, instead of going to the inn; but all the world might know that she took a carriage at Wryneck, half-way home, about four o'clock in the morning, and left it at the top gate of the park. Why, she was in her room by six, or a little after!

What on earth did the Bishop mean? Augustina fell into a maze of rather miserable cogitation. She recalled her brother's manner and words after his return from the station on the night of the expedition—and then next day, the news!—and Laura's abrupt admission: "I met him in the garden, Augustina, and—well! we soon understood each other. It had to come, I suppose—it might as well come then. But I don't wonder it's all very surprising to you——" And then such a wild burst of tears—such a sudden gathering of the stepmother in the girl's young arms—such a wrestle with feelings to which the bewildered Augustina had no clue.

Was Alan up all that night? Mrs. Denton had said something of the sort.
Was he really making up his mind to propose—because people might talk?
But why?—how ridiculous! Certainly it must have been very sudden. Mrs.
Denton met them coming upstairs a little after six; and Alan told her
then.

"Oh, if I only could understand it," thought Augustina, with a little moan. "And now Alan just lives and breathes for her. And she will be here, in my mother's place—Stephen's daughter."

Mrs. Fountain felt the burning of a strange jealousy. Her vanity and her heart were alike sore. She remembered how she had trembled before Alan in his strict youth—how she had apostatised even, merely to escape the demands which the intensity of Alan's faith made on all about him. And now this little chit of twenty, her own stepdaughter, might do and say what she pleased. She would be mistress of Alan, and of the old house. Alan's sister might creep into a corner, and pray!—that was enough for her.

And yet she loved Laura, and clung to her! She felt the humiliation of her secret troubles and envies. Her only comfort lay in her recovered faith; in the rosary to which her hands turned perpetually; in her fortnightly confession; in her visits to the sacrament. The great Catholic tradition beat through her meagre life, as the whole Atlantic may run pulsing through a drifting weed.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, near the entrance gate of the park, on a wooded knoll that overlooked the park wall and commanded the road beyond, Laura Fountain was sitting with the dogs—waiting for Helbeck.

He had been at Whinthorpe all day, on some business in which she was specially interested. The Romney lady was not yet sold. During May and June, Laura had often wondered why she still lingered on the wall. An offer had actually been made—so Augustina said. And there was pressing need for the money that it represented—that, every sojourner in Bannisdale must know. And yet, there still she hung.

Then, with the first day of her engagement, Laura knew why. "You saved her," said Helbeck. "Since that evening when you denounced me for selling her—little termagant!—I have racked my brains to keep her."

And now for some time there had been negotiations going on between Helbeck and a land agent in Whinthorpe for the sale of an outlying piece of Bannisdale land, to which the growth of a little watering-place on the estuary had given of late a new value. Helbeck, in general a singularly absent and ineffective man of business, had thrown himself into the matter with an astonishing energy, had pressed his price, hurried his solicitors, and begged the patience of the nuns—who were still sleeping in doorways and praying for new buildings—till all should be complete.

That afternoon he had ridden over to Whinthorpe in the hopes of signing the contract. He did not yet know—so Laura gathered—with whom he was really treating. The Whinthorpe agent had talked vaguely of "a Manchester gentleman," and Helbeck had not troubled himself to inquire further.

When they were married, would he still sell all that he had, and give to the poor—in the shape of orphanages and reformatories? Laura was almost as unpractical, and cared quite as little about money, as he. But her heart yearned towards the old house; and she already dreamt of making it beautiful and habitable again. As a woman, too, she was more alive to the habitual discomforts of the household than Helbeck himself. Mrs. Denton at least should go! So much he had already promised her. The girl thought with joy of that dismissal, tightening her small lips. Oh! the tyranny of those perpetual grumblings and parsimonies, of those sour unfriendly looks! Economy—yes! But it should be a seemly, a smiling economy in future—one still compatible with a little elegance, a little dignity.

Laura liked to think of her own three hundred a year; liked to feel it of importance in the narrow lot of this impoverished estate. To a rich bridegroom it would have been a trifle for contempt. To Helbeck and herself—though she scarcely believed that he had realised as yet that she possessed a farthing!—it would mean just escape from penury; a few more fires and servants and travellings; enough to ease his life from that hard strain that had tugged at it so long. For her money should not go to nuns or Jesuits!—she would protect it zealously, and not for her own sake.

… Oh! those days by the sea! Those were days for remembering. That tall form always beside her—those eyes so grey and kind—so fiery-kind, often!—revealing to her day by day more of the man, learning a new language for her alone, in all the world, a language that could set her trembling, that could draw her to him, in a humility that was strange and difficult, yet pure joy!—her hand slipping into his, her look sinking beneath his, almost with an appeal to love to let her be. Then—nothing but the sparkling sands and the white-edged waves for company! A little pleasant chat with Augustina; duty walks with her bath chair along the sea-wall; strolls in the summer dusk, while Mrs. Fountain, wrapped in her many shawls, watched them from the balcony; their day had known no other events, no other disturbance than these.

As far as things external were concerned.—Else, each word, each look made history. And though he had not talked much to her of his religion, his Catholic friends and schemes, all that he had said on these things she had been ready to take into a softened heart. His mystic's practice and belief wore still their grand air for her—that aspect of power and mystery which had in fact borne so large a part in the winning of her imagination, the subduing of her will. She did not want then to know too much. She wished the mystery still kept up. And he, on his side, had made it plain to her that he would not attempt to disturb her inherited ideas—so long as she herself did not ask for the teaching and initiation that could only, according to his own deepest conviction, bear fruit in the willing and prepared mind.

But now—— They were at Bannisdale again, and he was once more Helbeck of Bannisdale, a man sixteen years older than she, wound round with the habits and friendship and ideals which had been the slow and firm deposit of those years—habits and ideals which were not hers, which were at the opposite pole from hers, of which she still only dimly guessed the motives and foundations.

"Helbeck of Bannisdale." Her new relation to him, brought back into the old conditions, revealed to her day by day fresh meanings and connotations of the name. And the old revolts, under different, perhaps more poignant forms, were already strong.

What time this religion took! Apart from the daily Mass, which drew him always to Whinthorpe before breakfast, there were the morning and evening prayers, the visits to the Sacrament, the two Masses on Sunday morning, Rosary and Benediction in the evening, and the many occasional services for the marking of Saints'-days or other festivals. Not to speak of all the business that fell upon him as the chief Catholic layman of a large district.

And it seemed to her that since their return home he was more strict, more rigorous than ever in points of observance. She noticed that not only was Friday a fast-day, but Wednesday also was an "abstinence" day; that he looked with disquiet upon the books and magazines that were often sent her by the Friedlands, and would sometimes gently beg her—for the Sisters' sake—to put them out of sight; that on the subject of balls and theatres he spoke sometimes with a severity no member of the Metropolitan Tabernacle could have outdone. What was that phrase he had dropped once as to being "under a rule"? What was "The Third Order of St. Francis"? She had seen a book of "Constitutions" in his study; and a printed card of devout recommendations to "Tertiaries of the Northern Province" hung beside his table. She half thirsted, half dreaded, to know precisely what these things meant to him. But he was silent, and she shrank from asking.

Was he all the more rigid with himself on the religious side of late, because of that inevitable scandal which his engagement had given to his Catholic friends—perhaps because of his own knowledge of the weakening effects of passion on the will? For Laura's imagination was singularly free and cool where the important matters of her own life were concerned. She often guessed that but for the sudden emotion of that miserable night, and their strange meeting in the dawn, he might have succeeded in driving down and subduing his love for her—might have proved himself in that, as in all other matters, a good Catholic to the end. That she should have brought him to her feet in spite of all trammels was food for a natural and secret exultation. But now that the first exquisite days of love were over, the trammels, the forgotten trammels, were all there again—for the fretting of her patience. That his mind was often disturbed, his cheerfulness overcast, that his letters gave him frequently more pain than pleasure, and that a certain inward unrest made his dealings with himself more stern, and his manner to those around him less attractive than before,—these things were constantly plain to Laura. As she dwelt upon them, they carried flame and poison through the girl's secret mind. For they were the evidences of forces and influences not hers—forces that warred with hers, and must always war with hers. Passion on her side began to put forward a hundred new and jealous claims; and at the touch of resistance in him, her own will steeled.

As to the Catholic friends, surely she had done her best! She had called with Augustina on the Reverend Mother and Sister Angela—a cold, embarrassed visit. She had tried to be civil whenever they came to the house. She had borne with the dubious congratulations of Father Bowles. She had never once asked to see any portion of that correspondence which Helbeck had been carrying on for weeks with Father Leadham, persuaded though she was, from its effects on Helbeck's moods and actions, that it was wholly concerned with their engagement, and with the problems and difficulties it presented from the Catholic point of view.

She was preparing even to welcome with politeness that young Jesuit who had neglected his dying mother, against whom—on the stories she had heard—her whole inner nature cried out….

* * * * * The sound of a horse approaching. Up sprang the dogs, and she with them.

Helbeck waved his hand to her as he came over the bridge. Then at the gate he dismounted, seeing Wilson in the drive, and gave his horse to the old bailiff.

"Cross the bridge with me," he said, as he joined her, "and let us walk home the other side of the river. Is it too far?"

His eyes searched her face—with the eagerness of one who has found absence a burden. She shook her head and smiled. The little frown that had been marring the youth of her pretty brow smoothed itself away. She tripped beside him, feeling the contagion of his joy—inwardly repentant—and very happy.

But he was tired and disappointed by the day's result. The contract was not signed. His solicitor had been summoned in haste to make the will of a neighbouring magnate; some of the last formalities of his own business had been left uncompleted; and in short the matter was postponed for at least a day or two.

"I wish it was done," he said, sighing—and Laura could only feel that the responsibilities and anxieties weighing upon him seemed to press with unusual strength.

A rosy evening stole upon them as they walked along the Greet.—The glow caught the grey walls of the house on the further bank—lit up the reaches of the stream—and the bare branch work of a great ruined tree in front of them. Long lines of heavy wood closed the horizon on either hand, shutting in the house, the river, and their two figures.

"How solitary we are here!" he said, suddenly looking round him. "Oh!
Laura, can you be happy—with poverty—and me?"

"Well, I shan't read my prayer-book along the river!—and I shan't embroider curtains for the best bedroom—alack! Perhaps a new piano might keep me quiet—I don't know!"

He looked at her, then quickly withdrew his eyes, as though they offended. Through his mind had run the sacred thought, "Her children will fill her life—and mine!"

"When am I to teach you Latin?" he said, laughing.

She raised her shoulders.

"I wouldn't learn it if I could do without it! But you Catholics are bred upon it."

"We are the children of the Church," he said gently. "And it is her tongue."

She made no answer, and he talked of something else immediately. As they crossed the little footbridge he drew her attention to the deep pool on the further side, above which was built the wooden platform, where Laura had held her May tryst with Mason.

"Did I ever tell you the story of my great-grandfather drowning in that pool?"

"What, the drinking and gambling gentleman?"

"Yes, poor wretch! He had half killed his wife, and ruined the property—so it was time. He was otter hunting—there is an otter hole still, half-way down that bank. Somehow or other he came to the top of the crag alone, probably not sober. The river was in flood; and his poor wife, sitting on one of those rock seats with her needlework and her books, heard the shouts of the huntsmen—helped to draw him out and to carry him home. Do you see that little beach?"—he pointed to a break in the rocky bank. "It was there—so tradition says—that he lay upon her knee, she wailing over him. And in three months she too was gone."

Laura turned away.

"I won't think of it," she said obstinately. "I will only think of her as she is in the picture."

On the little platform she paused, with her hand on the railing, the dark water eddying below her, the crag above her.

"I could—tell you something about this place," she said slowly. "Do you want to hear?"

She bent over the water. He stood beside her. The solitude of the spot, the deep shadow of the crag, gave love freedom.

He drew her to him.

"Dear!—confess!"

She too whispered:

"It was here—I saw Hubert Mason—that night."

"Culprit! Repeat every word—and I will determine the penance."

"As if there had not been already too much! Oh! what a lecture you read me—and you have never apologised yet! Begin—begin—at once!"

He raised her hand and kissed it.

"So? Now—courage!"

And with some difficulty—half laughing—she described the scene with
Hubert, her rush home, her meeting with old Scarsbrook.

"I tell you," she insisted at the end, "there is good in that boy somewhere—there is!"

Helbeck said nothing.

"But you always saw the worst," she added, looking up.

"I am afraid I only saw what there was," he said dryly. "Dear, it gets cold, and that white frock is very thin."

They walked on. In truth, he could hardly bear that she should take Mason's name upon her lips at all. The thoughts and comments of ill-natured persons, of some of his own friends—the sort of misgiving that had found expression in the Bishop's talk with his sister—he was perfectly aware of them all, impossible as it would have been for Augustina or anyone else to say a word to him on the subject. The dignity no less than the passion of a strong man was deeply concerned. He repented and humbled himself every day for his own passing doubts; but his resolution only stiffened the more. There was no room, there should never be any room in Laura's future life, for any further contact with the Mason family.

And, indeed, the Mason family itself seemed to have arrived at very similar conclusions! All that Helbeck knew of them since the Froswick day might have been summed up in a few sentences. On the Sunday morning Mason, in a wild state, with wet clothes and bloodshot eyes, had presented himself at the Wilsons' cottage, asking for news of Miss Fountain. They told him that she was safely at home, and he departed. As far as Helbeck knew, he had spent the rest of the Sunday drinking heavily at Marsland. Since then Laura had received one insolent letter from him, reiterating his own passion for her, attacking Helbeck in the fiercest terms, and prophesying that she would soon be tired of her lover and her bargain. Laura had placed the letter in Helbeck's hands, and Helbeck had replied by a curt note through his solicitor, to the effect that if any further annoyance were offered to Miss Fountain he would know how to protect her.

Mrs. Mason also had written. Madwoman! She forbade her cousin to visit the farm again, or to hold any communication with Polly or herself. A girl, born of a decent stock, who was capable of such an act as marrying a Papist and idolater was not fit to cross the threshold of Christian people. Mrs. Mason left her to the mercy of her offended God.

* * * * *

And in this matter of her cousins Laura was not unwilling to be governed.
It was as though she liked to feel the curb.

And to-night as they strolled homewards, hand locked in hand, all her secret reserves and suspicions dropped away—silenced or soothed. Her charming head drooped a little; her whole small self seemed to shrink towards him as though she felt the spell of that mere physical maturity and strength that moved beside her youth. Their walk was all sweetness; and both would have prolonged it but that Augustina had been left too long alone.

She was no longer in the garden, however, and they went in by the chapel entrance, seeking for her.

"Let me just get my letters," said Helbeck, and Laura followed him to his study.

The afternoon post lay upon his writing-table. He opened the first, read it, and handed it with a look of hesitation to Laura.

"Dear, Mr. Williams comes to-morrow. They have given him a fortnight's holiday. He has had a sharp attack of illness and depression, and wants change. Will you feel it too long?"

Involuntarily her look darkened. She put down the letter without reading it.

"Why—I want to see him! I—I shall make a study of him," she said with some constraint.

But by this time Helbeck was half through the contents of his next envelope. She heard an exclamation of disgust, and he threw down what he held with vehemence.

"One can trust nobody!" he said—"nobody!"

He began to pace the floor with angry energy, his hands thrust into his pockets. She—in astonishment—threw him questions which he hardly seemed to hear. Suddenly he paused.

"Dear Laura!—will you forgive me?—but after all I must sell that picture!"

"Why?"

"I hear to-day, for the first time, who is to be the real purchaser of that land, and why it is wanted. It is to be the site of a new Anglican church and vicarage. I have been tricked throughout—tricked—and deceived! But thank God it is not too late! The circumstances of this afternoon were providential. There is still time for me to write to Whinthorpe." He glanced at the clock. "And my lawyers may tear up the contract when they please!"

"And—that means—you will sell the Romney?" said Laura slowly.

"I must! Dear little one!"—he came to stoop over her—"I am most truly grieved. But I am bound to my orphans by all possible engagements—both of honour and conscience."

"Why is it so horrible that an Anglican church should be built on your land?" she said, slightly holding him away from her.

"Because I am responsible for the use of my land, as for any other talent. It shall not be used for the spread of heresy."

"Are there any Catholics near it?"

"Not that I know of. But it has been a fixed principle with me throughout my life"—he spoke with a firm and, as she thought, a haughty decision—"to give no help, direct or indirect, to a schismatical and rebellious church. I see now why there has been so much secrecy! My land is of vital importance to them. They apparently feel that the whole Anglican development of this new town may depend upon it. Let them feel it. They shall not have a foot—not an inch of what belongs to me!"

"Then they are to have no church," said Laura. She had grown quite pale.

"Not on my land," he said, with a violence that first amazed and then offended her. "Let them find sympathisers of their own. They have filched enough from us Catholics in the past."

And he resumed his rapid walk, his face darkened with an anger he vainly tried to curb. Never had she seen him so roused.

She too rose, trembling a little.

"But I love that picture!" she said. "I beg you not to sell it."

He stopped, in distress.

"Unfortunately, dear, I have promised the money. It must be found within six weeks—and I see no other way."

She thought that he spoke stiffly, and she resented the small effect of her appeal.

"And you won't bend a single prejudice to—to save such a family possession—though I care for it so much?"

He came up to her with outstretched hands.

"I have been trying to save it all these weeks! Nothing but such a cause as this could have stood in the way. It is not a prejudice, darling—believe me!—it belongs, for me at any rate, to Catholic obligation."

She took no notice of the hands. With her own she clung to the table behind her.

"Why do you give so much to the Sisters? It is not right! They give a very bad education!"

He stared at her. How pale she had grown—and this half-stifled voice!——

"I think we must be the judges of that," he said, dropping his hands. "We teach what we hold most important."

"Nobody like Sister Angela ought to teach!" she cried—"you give money to bring pupils to Sister Angela. And she is not well trained. I never heard anyone talk so ignorantly as she does to Augustina. And the children learn nothing, of course—everyone says so."

"And you are so eager to listen to them?" he said, with sparkling eyes.
Then he controlled himself.

"But that is not the point. I humbly admit our teaching is not nearly so good as it might be if we had larger funds to spend upon it. But the point is that I have promised the money, and that a number of arrangements—fresh teachers among them—are already dependent on it. Dearest, won't you recognise my difficulties, and—and help me through them?"

"You make them yourself," she said, drawing back. "There would be none if you did not—hate—your fellow-citizens."

"I hate no one—but I cannot aid and abet the English Church. That is impossible to me. Laura!" He observed her carefully. "I don't understand. Why do you say these things?—why does it hurt you so much?"

"Oh! let me go," she cried, flinging his hand away from her. "Let me go!"

And before he could stop her, she had fled to the door, and disappeared.

* * * * *

Helbeck and Augustina ate a lonely dinner.

"You must have taken Laura too far this afternoon, Alan," said Mrs. Fountain fretfully. "She says she is too tired to come down again to-night—so very unlike her!"

"She did not complain—but it may have been a long round," said her companion.

* * * * *

After dinner, Helbeck took his pipe into the garden, and walked for long up and down the bowling-green, torn with solitary thought. He had put up his pipe, and was beginning drearily to feel the necessity of going back to his study, and applying himself—if he could force his will so far—to some official business that lay waiting for him there, when a light noise on the gravel caught his ear.

His heart leapt.

"Laura!"

She stopped—a white wraith in the light mist that filled the garden. He went up to her overwhelmed with the joy of her coming—accusing himself of a hundred faults.

She was too miserable to resist him. The storm of feeling through which she had passed had exhausted her wholly; and the pining for his step and voice had become an anguish driving her to him.

"I told you to make me afraid!" she said mournfully, as she found herself once more upon his breast—"but you can't! There is something in me that fears nothing—not even the breaking of both our hearts."