She did, with all the humility and such gentle submission to God's decree that I wept freely. It would appear that on the afternoon of that November concert, Alice, like so many other girls, was very much engrossed in her preparations for the evening. She had studied the "Young Lady's Journal" and several other works of interest and usefulness, and all day long was highly excited over her appearance. Once, when she was particularly engaged at the looking-glass, she heard some one fumbling at the half-door, as if anxious to come into the kitchen. Angry at being disturbed, she burst from her room, and saw in the framework of the door an awful sight. It was a poor woman, whose face was completely eaten away by a dread disease called nasal polypus. The nose was completely gone and the upper lip. The eyes stared out as if from a death's-head. The poor creature begged for alms; but Alice, flushed at the thought of her own beauty, and in a rage from being called away from her glass, clapped her hands and shouted:—

"Well, you are a beauty."

"Not so handsome as you, alanna," said the afflicted one. "There was wance when, perhaps, I was. But your time may come. Mockin' is catchin'. Mockin' is catchin'."

And with these words the woman strode away.

"I could not get the thought of my sin out of my head all that day," continued Alice; "her face was always coming before me, until at last I gave up looking at the glass. But when the night came and we were all in the concert-room, my vanity came back again, for I heard people whisper as I was passing, and my foolish head was turned. Then, when it was all over, and the girls broke into groups, and the people were all around, I tried to attract more attention. And I had been reading of a trick in the novels for making one's self more interesting by standing on tiptoe and opening the eyes widely; and, God help me! I was practising this foolishness, thinking that some of the young men were admiring me for it, when suddenly Father Letheby saw me, and he gave me a look that struck me like a flash of lightning. I felt dazed and blinded, and asked one of the girls to take me from the room and lead me home. But all that night I never slept, the woman's face and the awful look that Father Letheby gave me were staring at me out of the curtains and out of the dark, until late in the morning I fell into a sleep, only to dream the same dreadful things."

Here the poor girl broke down and sobbed in an agony of remorse.

"Well, then, Father, I got up sick and sorrowful, and before my breakfast I went over there to the Blessed Virgin's altar and said a Rosary, and begged and prayed her not to punish me for what I had done. Sure, I said, 't was only a girl's foolishness and I was young; and I promised then and there to give up novel-reading and to be good, and to let my hair fall down, and to drop all my foolish notions; but 't was no use. I saw something in the face of the Blessed Virgin that frightened me, and I knew I was in for something. I didn't think my punishment would be so dreadful."

Here the poor child sobbed again, and picked the coverlet mournfully as she tried to choke down her emotion. I looked over at that statue of the Blessed Virgin and shook my head reproachfully.

"Oh! Father, why does God punish us so terribly for such small sins?" the poor girl went on. "And what must purgatory be, and what must hell be when He punishes us so dreadfully here! I thought 't was all over and my fear was vanishing, when one Sunday morning, dressing for Mass, I noticed a tiny pimple here on my cheek. It wasn't as big as the head of a pin; but it gave me great trouble. Not that I suspected anything; but when our poor heads are turned with vanity, you don't know, Father, what a worry these little blemishes are. I just touched it with my finger and it bled. That night 't was an angry spot. I used everything I could think of—lard, and butter, and ointment. No use. Every day it grew and grew and grew into an ugly sore. Then I wrote, as Miss Levis advised me, to a London doctor, recommended in the journals; he sent me a prescription—"

"For nothing?" I interjected.