This "dear Minerva" was Miss Alice Mills, Mr. Robert Yorke's deserted fiancée. She and Owen were very close friends. It was one of those friendships which sometimes grow up between a woman whose youth is past and a youth whose manhood has scarcely arrived. Such a friendship may effect incalculable good or incalculable harm, as the woman shall choose.
"Well," he concluded, not caring to puzzle over the riddle, "she will explain, I suppose, when she writes. And if anybody can get at the cube-root of the difficulty, she can."
Meantime, while the son was musing, and the daughters were selecting their chambers, and making up a toilet for Edith, Mr. Yorke had sent for Patrick Chester in the sitting-room, and was questioning him concerning Catholic affairs in Seaton. They did not seem to be in a flourishing condition.
There was no priest settled there, Patrick said; but one came over from B—— once in two months, and said Mass for them. They had no church yet, but a little chapel, what there was left of it.
"What do you mean by that?" his master asked.
"Why, sir, some of the Seaton rowdies got into the chapel, one night, not long ago, and smashed the windows, and broke up the tabernacle, and destroyed the pictures entirely. And they twisted off the crucifix, though it was of iron, two inches wide and half an inch thick. The devil must have helped the man that did it, savin' your presence, ma'am."
"Are they vandals here?" demanded Mr. Yorke.
"There are some fine folks in Seaton," said Pat, who did not know what vandals are. "But the rowdies have everything pretty much their own way."
"And is there no law in the town?" asked Mr. Yorke wrathfully.
"There's a good many lawyers," said Pat, scratching his head.