"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.