A week later the Jesuit scholastic Edward Williams arrived at Bannisdale.

In Laura his coming roused a curiosity half angry, half feminine, by which Helbeck was alternately harassed and amused. She never tired of asking questions about the Jesuits—their training, their rules, their occupations. She could not remember that she had ever seen one till she made acquaintance with Father Leadham. They were alternately a mystery and a repulsion to her.

Helbeck smilingly told her that she was no worse than the mass of English people. "They have set up their bogey and they like it." She would be surprised to find how simple was the Jesuit secret.

"What is it?—in two words?" she asked him.

"Obedience—training. So little!" he laughed at her, and took her hand tenderly.

She inquired if Mr. Williams were yet "a full Jesuit."

"Oh dear no! He has taken his first vows. Now he has three years' philosophy, then four years' theology. After that they will make him teach somewhere. Then he will take orders—go through a third year's noviceship—get a doctor's degree, if he can—and after that, perhaps, he will be a professed 'Father.' It isn't done just by wishing for it, you see."

The spirit of opposition reared its head. She coloured, laughed—and half without intending it repeated some of the caustic things she had heard occasionally from her father or his friends as to the learning of Jesuits. Helbeck, under his lover's sweetness, showed a certain restlessness. He hardly let himself think the thought that Stephen Fountain had been quoted to him very often of late; but it was there.

"I am no judge," he said at last. "I am not learned. I dare say you will find Williams ignorant enough. But he was a clever boy—besides his art."

"And they have made him give up his art?"

"For a time—yes—perhaps altogether. Of course it has been his great renunciation. His superiors thought it necessary to cut him off from it entirely. And no doubt during the novitiate he suffered a great deal. It has been like any other starved faculty."

The girl's instincts rose in revolt. She cried out against such waste, such mutilation. The Catholic tried to appease her; but in another language. He bade her remember the Jesuit motto. "A Jesuit is like any other soldier—he puts himself under orders for a purpose."

"And God is to be glorified by the crashing out of all He took the trouble to give you!"

"You must take the means to the end," said Helbeck steadily. "The Jesuit must yield his will—otherwise the Society need not exist. In Williams's case, so long as he had a fascinating and absorbing pursuit, how could he give himself up to his superiors? Besides"—his grave face stiffened—"in his case there were peculiar difficulties. His art had become a temptation. He wished to protect himself from it."

Laura's curiosity was roused; but Helbeck gently put her questions aside, and at last she said in a flash of something like passion that she wondered which the young man had felt most—the trampling on his art, or the forsaking his mother.

Helbeck looked at her with sudden animation.

"I knew you had heard that story. Dear—he did not forsake his mother! He meant to go—the Fathers had given him leave. But there was a mistake, a miscalculation—and he arrived too late."

Laura's beautiful eyes threw lightnings.

"A miscalculation!" she cried scornfully, her quick breath beating—"That puts it in a nutshell."

Helbeck looked at her sadly.

"So you are going to be very unkind to him?"

"No. I shall watch him."

"Look into him rather! Try and make out his spring. I will help you."

She protested that there was nothing she less desired. She had been reading some Jesuit biographies from Augustina's room, and they had made her feel that the only thing to be done with such people was to keep them at a distance.

Helbeck sighed and gave up the conversation. Then in a moment, compunctions and softenings began to creep over the girl's face. A small hand made its way to his.

"There is Wilson in the garden—shall we go and talk to him?"

They were in Helbeck's study—where Augustina had left them alone for a little after luncheon.

Helbeck put down his pipe with alacrity. Laura ran for her hat and cape, and they went out together.

A number of small improvements both inside and outside the house had been recently inaugurated to please the coming bride. Already Helbeck realised—and not without a secret chafing—the restraints that would soon be laid upon the almsgiving of Bannisdale. A man who marries, who may have children, can no longer deal with his money as he pleases. Meanwhile he found his reward in Laura's half-reluctant pleasure. She was at once full of eagerness and full of a proud shyness. No bride less grasping or more sensitive could have been imagined. She loved the old house and would fain repair its hurts. But her wild nature, at the moment, asked, in this at least, to be commanded, not to command. To be the managing wife of an obedient husband was the last thing that her imagination coveted. So that when any change in the garden, any repair in the house, was in progress, she would hover round Helbeck, half cold, half eager, now only showing a fraction of her mind, and now flashing out into a word or look that for Helbeck turned the whole business into pure joy. Day by day, indeed, amid all jars and misgivings, the once solitary master of Bannisdale was becoming better acquainted with that mere pleasantness of a woman's company which is not passion, but its best friend. In the case of those women whom nature marks for love, it is a company full of incident, full of surprise. Certainly Helbeck found it so.

A week or more had now passed since the quarrel over the picture. Not a word upon the subject had passed between them since. As for Laura, she took pains not to look at the picture—to forget its existence. It was as though she felt some hidden link between herself and it—as though some superstitious feeling attached to it in her mind.

Meanwhile a number of new understandings were developing in Helbeck. His own nature was simple and concentrated, with little introspective power of the modern kind—even through all the passions and subtleties of his religion. Nevertheless his lover's sense revealed to him a good deal of what was going on in the semi-darkness of Laura's feelings and ideas. He divined this jealousy of his religious life that had taken possession of her since their return from the sea. He felt by sympathy that obscure pain of separation that tormented her. What was he to do?—what could he do?

The change astonished him, for while they were at the sea, it seemed to him that she had accepted the situation with a remarkable resolution. But it also set him on new trains of thought; it roused in him a secret excitement, a vague hope. If her earlier mood had persisted; if amid the joys of their love she had continued to put the whole religious matter away from her, as many a girl with her training might and would have done—then indeed he must have resigned himself to a life-long difference and silence between them on these vital things.

But, since she suffered—since she felt the need of that more intimate, more exquisite link—? Since she could not let it alone, but must needs wound herself and him——?

Instinctively he felt the weakness of her intellectual defence. Once or twice he let himself imagine the capture of her little struggling soul, the break-down of her childish resistance, and felt the flooding of a joy, at once mystical and very human.

But that natural chivalry and deep self-distrust he had once expressed to
Father Leadham kept him in check; made him very slow and scrupulous.
Towards his Catholic friends indeed he stood all along in defence of
Laura, an attitude which only made him more sensitive and more vulnerable
in other directions.

Meanwhile his own struggles and discomforts were not few. No strong man of Helbeck's type endures so complete an overthrow at the hands of impulse and circumstance as he had done, without going afterwards through a period of painful readjustment. The new image of himself that he saw reflected in the astonished eyes of his Catholic companions worked in him a number of fresh forms of self-torment. His loyalty to Laura, indeed, and to his own passion was complete. Secretly, he had come to believe, with all the obstinate ardor of the religious mind, that the train of events which had first brought Laura into his life, and had then overcome his own resistance to her spell, represented, not temptation, but a Divine volition concerning him. No one so impoverished and forlorn as she in the matters of the soul! But not of her own doing. Was she responsible for her father? In the mere fact that she had so incredibly come to love him—he being what he was—there was surely a significance which the Catholic was free to interpret in the Catholic sense. So that, where others saw defection from a high ideal and danger to his own Catholic position, he, with hidden passion, and very few words of explanation even to his director, Father Leadham, felt the drawing of a heavenly force, the promise of an ultimate and joyful issue.

At the same time, the sadness of his Catholic friends should find no other pretext. Upon his fidelity now and here, not only his own eternal fate, but Laura's, might depend. Devotion to the crucified Lord and His Mother, obedience to His Church, imitation of His saints, charity to His poor—these are the means by which the Catholic draws down the grace, the condescension that he seeks. He felt his own life offered for hers. So that the more he loved her, the more set, the more rigid became all the habits and purposes of religion. Again and again he was tempted to soften them—to spend time with her that he had been accustomed to give to Catholic practice—to slacken or modify the harshness of that life of self-renouncement, solitude, unpopularity, to which he had vowed himself for years—to conceal from her the more startling and difficult of his convictions. But he crushed the temptation, guided, inflamed by that profound idea of a substituted life and a vicarious obedience which has been among the root forces of Christianity.

* * * * *

One evening, as she was dressing for the very simple meal that only Mrs.
Denton dignified by the name of "dinner," Laura reminded herself that Mr.
Williams must have arrived, and that she would probably find him in the
hall on her descent.

It happened to be the moment for donning a new dress, which she had
ordered from a local artist. She had no mind to exhibit it to the Jesuit.
On the other hand the temptation to show it to Helbeck was irresistible.
She put it on.

When she entered the hall, her feelings of dislike to Mr. Williams, and her pride in her new dress, had both combined to give her colour and radiance. Helbeck saw her come in with a start of pleasure. Augustina fidgeted uncomfortably. She thought that Laura might have dressed in something more quiet and retiring to meet a guest who was a religious, almost a priest.

Helbeck introduced the newcomer. Laura's quick eyes travelled over the young man who bowed to her with a cold awkwardness. She turned aside and seated herself in a corner of the settle, whither Helbeck came to bend over her.

"What have you been doing to yourself?" he asked her in a low voice. At the moment of her entrance she had thought him pale and fatigued. He had been half over the country that day on Catholic business. But now his deep-set eyes shone again. He had thrown off the load.

"Experimenting with a Whinthorpe dressmaker," she said; "do you approve?"

Her smile, her brilliance in her pretty dress, intoxicated him. He murmured some lover's words under his breath. She flushed a little deeper, then exerted herself to keep him by her. Till supper was announced they had not a word or look for anyone but each other. The young "scholastic" talked ceremoniously to Augustina.

"Who talks of Jesuit tyranny now?" said Helbeck, laughing, as he and
Laura led the way to the dining-room. "If it is not too much for him,
Williams has leave to finish some of his work in the chapel while he is
here. But he looks very ill—don't you think so?"

She understood the implied appeal to her sympathy.

"He is extraordinarily handsome," she said, with decision.

At table, however, she came to terms more exactly with her impression. The face of the young Jesuit was indeed, in some ways, singularly handsome. The round, dark eyes, the features delicate without weakness, the high brow narrowed by the thick and curly hair that overhung it, the small chin and curving mouth, kept still something of the look and the bloom of the child—a look that was only intensified by the strange force of expression that was added to the face whenever the lids so constantly dropped over the eyes were raised. For one saw in it a mingling at once of sharp observation and of distrust; it seemed to spring from some fiery source of personality, which at the very moment it revealed itself, yet warned the spectator back, and stood, half proudly, half sullenly, on the defensive. Such a look one may often see in the eyes of a poetic and morbid child.

But the whole aspect was neither delicate nor poetic. For the beauty of the head was curiously and unexpectedly contradicted by the clumsiness of the frame below it. "Brother" Williams might have the head of a poet; he had the form and movements, the large feet and shambling gait, of the peasant. And Laura, scanning him with some closeness, noticed with distaste a good many signs of personal slovenliness and ill-breeding. His hands were not as clean as they might have been; his clerical coat badly wanted a brushing.

His talk to Augustina could hardly have been more formal. In speaking to ladies he seldom raised his eyes; and as far as she herself was concerned Laura was certain, before half an hour was over, that he meant to address her and to be addressed by her, as little as possible.

Towards Helbeck the visitor's manner was more natural and more attractive. It was a manner of affection, and great deference; but even here the occasional bursts of conversation into which the Squire drew his guest were constantly interrupted by fits of silence or absence on the part of the scholastic.

Perhaps the subject on which they talked most easily was that of Jesuit Missions—especially of certain West African stations. Helbeck had some old friends there; and Laura thought she detected that the young scholastic had himself missionary ambitions.

Augustina too joined in with eagerness; Laura fell silent.

But she watched Helbeck, she listened to Helbeck throughout. How full his mind and heart were of matters, persons, causes, that must for ever represent a sealed world to her! The eagerness, the knowledge with which he discussed them, roused in her that jealous, half-desolate sense that was becoming an habitual tone of mind.

And some things offended her taste. Helbeck showed most animation, and the young Jesuit most response, whenever it was a question not so much of Catholic triumphs, as of Protestant rebuffs. The follies, mistakes, and defeats of Anglican missions in particular—Helbeck's memory was stored with them. By his own confession he had made a Jesuit friend departing for the mission, promise to tell him any funny or discreditable tales that could be gathered as to their Anglican rivals in the same region. And while he repeated them for Williams's amusement, he laughed immoderately—he who laughed so seldom. The Jesuit too was convulsed—threw off all restraint for the first time.

The girl flushed brightly, and began to play with Bruno. Years ago she remembered hearing her father say approvingly of Helbeck's manner and bearing that they were those "of a man of rank, though not of a man of fashion;" and it was hardly possible to say how much of Helbeck's first effect on her imagination had been produced by that proud unworldliness, that gently, cold courtesy in which he was commonly wrapped. These silly pointless stories that he had been telling with such relish disturbed and repelled her. They revealed a new element in his character, something small and ugly, that was like the speck in a fine fruit, or, rather, like the disclosure of an angry sore beneath an outward health and strength.

She recalled the incident of the land, and that cold isolation in which Helbeck held himself towards his Protestant neighbours—the passionate animosity with which he would sometimes speak of their charities or their pietisms, the contempt he had for almost all their ideals, national or social. Again and again, in the early days at Bannisdale, it had ruffled or provoked her.

Helbeck soon perceived that she was jarred. When she called to Bruno he checked his flow of anecdote, and said to her in a lower voice:

"You think us uncharitable?"

She looked up—but rather at the Jesuit than at Helbeck.

"No—only it is not amusing! If Augustina or I could speak for the other side—that would be more fun!"

"Laura!" cried Augustina, scandalised.

"Oh, I know you wouldn't, if you could," said the girl gayly. "And I can't. So there it is. One can't stop you, I suppose!"

She threw back her bright head and turned to Helbeck. The action was pretty and coquettish; but there was a touch of fever in it, nevertheless, which did not escape the stranger sitting opposite to her. Brother Williams raised his down-dropped lids an instant. Those brilliant eyes of his took in the girl's beauty and the change in Helbeck's countenance.

"You shall stop what you like," said Helbeck. A mute conversation seemed to pass between him and Miss Fountain; then the Squire turned to his sister, and asked her cheerfully as to the merits of a new pony that she and Laura had been trying that afternoon.

* * * * *

After dinner Helbeck, much troubled by the pinched features and pale cheeks of his guest, descended himself to the cellar in search of a particular Burgundy laid down by his father and reputed to possess a rare medicinal force.

Mr. Williams was left standing before the hearth, and the famous carved mantelpiece put up by the martyr of 1596. As soon as Helbeck was gone he looked carefully—furtively—round the room. It was the look of the peasant appraising a world not his.

A noise made by the wind at one of the old windows disturbed him. He looked up and was caught by a photograph that had been propped against one of the vases of the mantelpiece. It was a picture—recently taken—of Miss Fountain sitting on the settle in the hall with the dogs beside her. And it rendered the half-mocking animation of her small face with a peculiar fidelity.

The young man was conscious of a strong movement of repulsion. Mr. Helbeck's engagement had sent a thrill of pain through a large section of the Catholic world; and the Jesuit had already divined a hostile force in the small and brilliant creature whose eyes had scanned him so coldly as she sat beside the Squire. He fell into a reverie, and took one or two turns up and down the room.

"Shall I?" he said to himself in an excitement that was half vanity, half religion.

* * * * *

Half an hour later Laura was in the oriel window of the drawing-room, looking out through the open casement at the rising of a golden moon above the fell. Her mind was full of confusion.

"Is he never to be free to say what he thinks and feels in his own house?" she asked herself passionately. "Or am I to sit by and see him sink to the level of these bigots?"

Augustina was upstairs, and Laura, absorbed in her own thoughts and the night loveliness of the garden, did not hear Helbeck and Mr. Williams enter the room, which was as usual but dimly lighted. Suddenly she caught the words:

"So you still keep her? That's good! One could not imagine this room without her."

The voice was the voice of the Jesuit, but in a new tone—more eager, more sincere. What were they talking of?—the picture? And she, Laura, of course was hidden from them by the heavy curtain half drawn across the oriel. She could not help waiting for Helbeck's reply.

"Ah!—you remember how she was threatened even when you first began to come here! I have clung to her, of course—there has always been a strong feeling about her in the family. Last week I thought again that she must go. But—well! it is too soon to speak—I still have some hopes—-I have been straining every nerve. You know, however, that we must begin our new buildings at the orphanage in six weeks—and that I must have the money?"

He spoke with his usual simplicity. Laura dropped her head upon the window-sill, and the tears rushed into her eyes.

"I know—we all know—what you have done and sacrificed for the faith," said the younger man with emotion.

"You will not venture to make a merit of it," said Helbeck gravely. "For we serve the same ends—only you perceive them more clearly—and follow them more persistently than I."

"I have stronger aids—and shall have to answer for more!" said Williams, in a low voice. "And I owe it all to you—my friend and rescuer."

"You use a great deal too strong language," said Helbeck, smiling.

Williams threw him an uncertain look. The colour mounted in the young man's sickly cheek. He approached the Squire.

"Mr. Helbeck—I know from something a common friend told me—that you think—that you have said to others—that my conversion was not your doing. You are mistaken. I should like to tell you the truth. May I?"

Helbeck looked uncomfortable, but was not ready enough to stave off the impending confidence. Williams fixed him with eyes now fully lifted, and piercingly bright.

"You said little—that is quite true. But it was what you did, what I saw as I worked here beside you week after week that conquered me. Do you remember once rebuking me in anger because I had made some mistake in the chapel work? You were very angry—and I was cut to the heart. That very night you came to me, as I was still working, and asked my pardon—you! Mr. Helbeck of Bannisdale, and I, a boy of sixteen, the son of the wheelwright who mended your farm carts. You made me kneel down beside you on the steps of the sanctuary—and we said the Confiteor together. Don't say you forget it!"

Helbeck hesitated, then spoke with evident unwillingness.

"You make a great deal of nothing, my dear Edward. I had treated you to one of the Helbeck rages, I suppose—and had the grace to be ashamed of myself."

"It made me a Catholic," said the other emphatically, "so I naturally dwell upon it. Next day I stole a 'Garden of the Soul' and a book of meditations from your study. Then, on the pretext of the work, I used to make you tell me or read me the stories of the saints—later, I often used to follow you in the morning when you went to Mass. I watched you day by day, till the sense of something supernatural possessed me. Then you noticed my coming to Mass—you asked Father Bowles to speak to me—you seemed to shrink—or I thought so—from speaking yourself. But it was not Father Bowles—it was not my first teachers at St. Aloysius it was you—who brought me to the faith!"

"Well, if so, I thank God. But I think your humility——"

"One moment," said the Jesuit hurriedly. "There is something on my mind to say to you—if I might be allowed to say it—if the gratitude, the strong and filial gratitude, which I feel towards you—for that, and much, much else," his voice shook, "might be my excuse——"

Helbeck was silent. Laura to her dismay heard the sound of steps. Mr.
Williams had walked to the open door of the drawing-room and closed it.
What was she to do? Indecision—a wilful passion of curiosity—held her
where she was.

It was some moments, however, before the conversation was resumed. At last the young man said in a tone of strong agitation:

"You may blame me—my superiors may blame me. I have no leave—no commission whatever. The impulse to speak came to me when I was waiting for you in the dining-room just now. I can only plead your own goodness to me—and—the fact that I have remembered you before the Blessed Sacrament for these eight years…. It was an impression at meditation that I want to tell you of—an impression so strong that I have never since been able to escape from it—it haunts me perpetually. I was in our chapel at St. Aloysius. The subject of meditation was St. John vii. 36, 'Every man went unto his own house,' followed immediately by the first words of the eighth chapter, 'and Jesus went unto Mount Olivet.' … I endeavoured strictly to obey the advice of St. Ignatius. I placed myself at the feet of our Lord. I went through the Preludes. Then I began on the meditation. I saw the multitude returning to their homes and their amusements—while our Lord went alone to the Mount of Olives. It was evening. The path seemed to me steep and weary—and He was bent with fatigue. At first He was all alone—darkness hung over the hill and the olive gardens. Then, suddenly, I became aware of forms that followed Him, at a long distance—saints, virgins, martyrs, confessors. They swept along in silence. I could just see them as a dim majestic crowd. Presently, a form detached itself from the crowd—to my amazement, I saw you distinctly—there seemed to be a special light upon your face. And the rest appeared to fall back. Soon I only saw the Form toiling in front, and you following. Then at the brow of the hill the Lord turned—and you, who were half-way up the last steep, paused also. The Lord beckoned to you. His Divine face was full of sweetness and encouragement—and you made a spring towards Him. Then something happened—something horrible—but I could hardly see what. But a figure seemed to snatch at you from behind—you stumbled—then you fell headlong. A black cloud fell from the sky—and covered you. I heard a wailing cry—I saw the Lord's face darkened—and immediately afterwards the train of saints swept past me once more, with bent heads, beating their breasts. I cannot describe the extraordinary vividness of it! The succession of thoughts and images never paused; and when I woke, or seemed to wake, I found myself bathed in sweat and nearly fainting."

There was a dead silence.

The scholastic began again, in still more rapid and troubled tones, to excuse himself. Mr. Helbeck might well think it presumption on his part to have repeated such a thing. He could only plead a strange pressure on his conscience—a sense of obligation. The fact was probably nothing—meant nothing. But if calamity came—if it meant calamity—and he had not delivered his message—would there not have been a burden on his soul?

Suddenly there was a sound. The handle of the drawing-room turned.

"Why, you are dark in here!" said Augustina. "What a wretched light that lamp gives!"

At the same moment the heavy curtain over the oriel window was drawn to one side, and a light figure entered the room.

The Jesuit made a step backwards. "Laura!" cried Helbeck in bewilderment.
"Where have you come from?"

"I was in the window watching the moon rise. Didn't you know?"

She walked up to him, and without hesitation she did what she had never yet done before a spectator: she slipped her little hand into his. He looked down upon her, rather pale, his lips moving. Then withdrawing his hand, he quietly and proudly put his arm round her. She accepted the movement with equal pride, and without a word.

Augustina looked at them with discomfort—coughed, fumbled with her spectacles, and began to hunt for her knitting. The Jesuit, whiter and sicklier than before, murmured that he would go and rest after his journey, and with eyes steadily cast down he walked away.

"I don't wonder!" thought Augustina, in an inward heat; "they really are too demonstrative!"

That night for the first time since her arrival at Bannisdale, Laura, instead of saying good-night as soon as the clock reached a quarter to ten, quietly walked beside Augustina to the chapel.

She knelt at some distance from Helbeck. But when the prayers, which were read by Mr. Williams, were over, and the tiny congregation was leaving the chapel, she felt herself drawn back. Helbeck did not speak, but in the darkness of the corridor he raised her hands and held them long against his lips. She quickly escaped from him, and without another word to anyone she was gone.

But an hour or two later, as she lay wakeful in her room above the study, she still heard the sound of continuous voices from below.

Helbeck and the scholastic!—plunged once more in that common stock of recollections and interests in which she had no part, linked and reconciled through all difference by that Catholic freemasonry of which she knew nothing. The impertinent zeal of the evening—the young man's ill manners and hypocrisies—would be soon forgiven. In some ways Mr. Helbeck was more Jesuit than the Jesuits. He would not only excuse the audacity—was she quite sure that in his inmost heart he would not shrink before the warning?

"What chance have I?" she cried, in a sudden despair; and she wept long and miserably, oppressed by new terrors, new glimpses, as it were, of some hard or chilling reality that lay waiting for her in the dim corridors of life.

* * * * *

Next morning after breakfast, Helbeck and Mr. Williams disappeared. A light scaffolding had been placed in the chapel. Work was to begin.

Laura put on her hat, took a basket, and went into the garden to gather fresh flowers for the house. Along the edges of the bowling-green stood rows of sunflowers, a golden show against the deep bronze of the thick beech hedges that enclosed the ground. Laura was trying, without much success, to reach some of the top blossoms of a tall plant when Helbeck came upon her.

"Be as independent as you please," he said laughing, "but you will never be able to gather sunflowers without me!"

In a moment her basket was filled. He looked down upon her.

"You should live here—in the bowling-green. It frames you—your white hat—your grey dress. Laura!"—his voice leapt—"do I do enough to make you happy?"

She flushed—turned her little face, and smiled at him—but rather sadly, rather pensively. Then she examined him in her turn. He looked jaded and tired. From want of sleep?—or merely from the daily fatigue of that long walk, foodless, to Whinthorpe for early Mass? That morning, as usual, by seven o'clock she had seen him crossing the park. A cheerless rain was falling from a grey sky. But she had never yet known him stopped by weather.

There was a quick association of ideas—and she said abruptly:

"Why did Mr. Williams say all that to you last night, do you suppose?"

Helbeck's countenance changed. He sauntered on beside her, his hands in his pockets, frowning. But he did not reply, and she became impatient.

"I have been reading a French story this morning," she said quickly. "There is a character in it—a priest. The author says of him that he had 'une imagination faussÉe et troublÉe.'" She paused, then added with great vivacity—"I thought it applied to someone else—don't you?"

The fold in Helbeck's forehead deepened a little.

"Have you judged him already? I don't know—I can't take Williams, you see, quite as you take him. To me he is still the strange gifted boy I taught to draw—whom I had to protect from his brutal father. He has chosen the higher life, and will soon be a priest. He is therefore my superior. But at the same time I think I understand him and his character. I understand the kind of impulse—the impetuosity—that made him do and say what he did last night."

"It was our engagement, of course, that he meant—by your fall—the black cloud that covered you?"

The impetuous directness was all Laura; so was the sensitive change in eye and lip. But Helbeck neither wavered, nor caressed her. He had a better instinct. He looked at her with a penetrating glance.

"I don't think he quite knew what he meant. And you? Now I will carry the war into the enemy's country! Were you quite kind—quite right in doing what you did last night? Foolish or no, he was speaking in a very intimate way—of things that he felt deeply. It must have given him great pain to be overheard."

Her breath fluttered.

"It was quite an accident that I was there. But how could I help listening? I must know—I ought to know—what your Catholic friends think—what they say of me to you!"

She was conscious of a childish petulance. But it was as though she could not help herself.

"I wish you had not listened," he said, with gentle steadiness. "Won't you trust those things to me?"

"What power have I beside theirs?" she said, turning away her head. He saw the trembling of the soft throat, and bent over her.

"I only ask you, for both our sakes, not to test it too far!"

And taking her hand by force, he crushed it passionately in his own.

But she was only half appeased. Her mind, indeed, was in that miserable state when love finds its only pleasure in self-torment.

With a secret change of ground she asked him how he was going to spend the day. He answered, reluctantly, that there was a Diocesan Committee that would take the afternoon, and that the morning must be largely given to the preparation of papers.

"But you will come and look in upon me?—you will help me through?"

She raised her shoulders resentfully.

"And you have been, to Whinthorpe already!—Why do you go to Mass every morning?" she asked, looking up. "I know very few Catholics do. I wish you'd tell me."

He looked embarrassed.

"It has been my custom for a long time," he said at last.

"But why?"

"Inquisitive person!"

Her look of pain checked him. He observed her rather sadly and silently for a moment, then said:

"I will tell you, dear, of course, if you want to know. It is one of the obligations of the Third Order of St. Francis, to which I belong."

"What does that mean?"

He shortly explained. She cross-examined. He was forced to describe to her in detail all the main constitutions of the Third Order; its obligations as to fasting, attendance at Mass, and at the special meetings of the fraternity; its prescriptions of a rigid simplicity in life and dress; its prohibition of theatre-going.

She stood amazed. All her old notions of Catholics as gay people, who practised a free Sunday and allowed you to enjoy yourself, had been long overthrown by the Catholicism of Bannisdale. But this—this might be Daffady's Methodism!

"So that is why you would not take us to Whinthorpe the other day to see that London company?"

"It was an unsuitable play," he said hastily. "Theatres are not wholly forbidden us; but the exceptions must be few, and the plays such as a Catholic can see without harm to his conscience."

"But I love acting!" she cried, almost with a sense of suffocation. "Whenever I could, I got papa to take me to the play. I shall always want to go."

"There will be nothing to prevent you."

"So that anything is good enough for those who are not tertiaries!" she cried, confronting him.

Her cheeks burned. Had there been any touch of spiritual arrogance in his tone?

"I think I shall not answer that," he said, after a pause.

They walked on—she blindly holding herself as far as possible from him; he, with the mingled ardour and maladroitness of his character, longing and not quite venturing to cut the whole coil, and silence all this mood in her, by some masterfulness of love.

Suddenly she paused—she stepped to him—she laid her fingers on his arms—bright tears shone in her eyes.

"You can't—you can't belong to that—when we are married?"

"To the Third Order? But, dear!—there is nothing in it that conflicts with married life! It was devised specially for persons living in the world. You would not have me give up what has been my help and salvation for ten years?"

He spoke with great emotion. She trembled and hid her face against him.

"Oh! I could not bear it!" she said. "Can't you realise how it would divide us? I should feel outside—a pariah. As it is, I seem to have nothing to do with half your life—there is a shut door between me and it."

A flash of natural, of wholly irresistible feeling passed through him. He stooped and kissed her hair.

"Open the door and come in!" he said in a whisper that seemed to rise from his inmost soul.

She shook her head. They were both silent. The deep shade of the "wilderness" trees closed them in. There was a gentle melancholy in the autumn morning. The first leaves were dropping on the cobwebbed grass; and the clouds were low upon the fells.

Presently Laura raised herself. "Promise me you will never press me," she said passionately; "don't send anyone to me."

He sighed.

"I promise."