“I hardly know which is up and which is down,” Lawrence said. “Is Europe made of clay and rock, like America?”

His wife was leaning on his arm, and they stood looking over the rail of the little steamer. “We might come this way a hundred times, and not see such a sight,” she replied. “But there is land beyond. That is France—that low, dark line. In a few hours we shall be in Paris. I shall be glad to rest when we get there.”

But when they reached it, Paris was as much too light as London had been too dark. In the one city a foe might stumble upon them at any moment; in the other, he might see them from afar. They went to a dingy little hotel in the old part of Paris, and stayed there one day, trying to find rest, but in vain. Every sound made their hearts beat more quickly; every glance and sudden step near them sent the blood to their faces. Besides, the quiet of the place afforded them no distraction from their thoughts. The noises in the narrow street on which the hotel was built were all shut out by the heavy portal, and the quadrangle was as still as a forest solitude. Ivy climbed about the windows, a tiny fountain overflowed and ran in a stream across the pavement, and the only persons who appeared were the clergymen who were the chief patrons of the house, and now and then the universal waiter and servant of servants, François, who shuffled across the view, a napkin over his arm, and his heavy head dropped forward, so that only a great ball of frowzy dark hair was visible.

“We cannot stay here,” Annette said, as they stood by the window the first evening after their arrival. “It is too much like a prison.” She felt her husband start, and made haste to add: “It is stupid, and I fancy the air is not good. Besides, Paris is too gay, if we go out into the city. We do not want gaiety, Lawrence. We want some earnest employment for our time.”

“We will go to Rome,” he said.

“Rome!” she hesitated. “One meets everybody there,” she said; “and there are so many idlers, too, who have nothing to do but talk of other people's affairs. Are you sure you wish to go to Rome, dear?”

“I must go! I have an object in going there,” he exclaimed, excited by the first show of even slight opposition. “I stake all on Rome. Whatever happens to me, let it happen there.”

“We will go, then,” she answered soothingly. “And we may as well set out to-night. Nothing is unpacked, and we have three hours before the train starts.”

He walked to and fro over the stone floor of their little sitting-room, which allowed only half a dozen paces, so narrow was it. “Three hours!” he muttered. “It is too much! Cannot we go out? There must be a church near.”

“Yes; in France and in Italy there is always a church near.”

Annette clasped her hands over her husband's arm, and leaned her cheek close to his shoulder, as they stood near the door and looked at this little beacon. “O Lawrence!” she whispered, “it is like the light the mother sets in the window to guide her children home at night. O me! O me!” she cried pitifully. “What is to become of us!”

A crown of tapers burned about the shrine where the body of S. Geneviève had once lain, and an old woman sat near by with her prayer-book, presiding over a table piled with tapers of different lengths, her white cap showing like a little heap of snow in the place.

“People buy tapers for a sou or two, and set them by the shrine to honor S. Geneviève and remind her of their needs,” Annette said softly as they approached this illuminated space. “Would you like to offer one?”

Lawrence Gerald had been wont to mock somewhat at such observances in the old time before life had been shattered about him and shown eternity between its gaps. Now he went eagerly forward, selected a taper, lighted it, and placed it, whispering a prayer while his fingers lingered on it. Annette followed his example, placing her offering beside his, and making her request also.

As they were turning away, a sacristan approached them from the next chapel, and asked if they had any article they would like to have touched to the inside of the shrine. Annette immediately gave him her rosary, which he laid an instant where the saint's body had lain.

“Ask him if I can put my hands in,” Lawrence whispered.

“Certainly you can!” she answered with dignity, seeing the man look rather curiously at him.

She held the lid open, and her husband put both his hands in, and instantly drew them back, his eyes dilating and his color rising, as if he had put them into fire.

They walked on past the grand altar, and knelt in a nook by a confessional. The daylight faded, and the smouldering fires of the windows went out in black and ashen gray. But when no outer brightness was left to enter and show the glories of that house of God, the lamps and tapers inside burned with a clearer flame. They shed a faint illumination through the vast twilight; they spread a soft gilding up the height of the clustered pillars, and made tender the gloom brooding in the roof that arched over their capitals; they sparkled on the crowns of the saints, and touched marble faces with such a holy radiance that a soul seemed to shine through them.

A slight stir in the confessional near them showed that a priest was there. “Lawrence,” said Annette suddenly, “may I go to confession?”

“Wait a minute,” he answered. “I will go first, and then you will only need to say that you are my wife.”

His tone revealed a bitter pain; for unconsciously her question had shown that there was no weight on her conscience save that which he had placed there, and that she was more in need of consolation than of forgiveness.

She sank on to her knees again. “O my God!” she murmured, “has it come to this, that I must enter thy house without being able to find comfort there?”

It was nearly half an hour before Lawrence joined her, and they went out together. “I have no wish to go now,” she said when he offered to wait while she went to confession. “Besides, there is no time, if we are to start to-night.”

“Do you know, Annette, what I prayed for when I put the taper up in honor of S. Geneviève?” her husband asked when they were again in the street. “I asked that my mother may die in peace before the month is out. That will be in less than two weeks.”

“My poor Lawrence!” she sighed.

“And can you guess the reason why I wish, above all things, to go to Rome, and don't much care what may happen after?” he went on. “Of course you cannot. Well, I want to receive absolution from the Pope. I go to confession, and pour out my story there, and I feel no better for it; or, if I feel better than I should without confession, I am still not at peace. I don't feel absolved. Yet I want to go to confession every hour of the day. I am like the Ancient Mariner, who had to tell his story to every one he met. I want to tell mine to every priest in the world.”

“But, dear Lawrence,” she said, “that will not be so easy to compass. Don't expect such a privilege too confidently. You know we cannot have an audience, because we cannot go to him under false names. If we could, his blessing would satisfy you, would it not? But I see no way, dear, though I would not discourage you.”

For once her objections did not irritate him. “I have been thinking of it ever since we left America,” he said; “and in one way or another I shall succeed. Yes, his blessing would be enough; and if there were no other way, I could tell him my real name. Now, we must make haste. We have just time to reach the station.”

How many hearts have quickened in their beating as they travelled that road, drawing near to Italy! How many eyes have gazed eagerly at that first cross, set aloft on the mountain side, at the first shrine of the Virgin Mother! And then come the armies of poplars and solemn cypresses.

“They look as if the dead warriors, and prelates, and poets had risen from their graves, and were staring out over Italy to see what their degenerate sons were doing,” Annette said. “See how tightly they hold their cold green robes about them!”

The two strangers leaned on the balustrade of the bridge, and, as they gazed, felt the curse upon them grow less sharp, as though they were ghosts, and their crime some old, old story, touched with a sad splendor by poet and painter, and half washed away by the tears of pitying generations.

Standing there, silent and half comforted, they became aware of a low, murmurous sound of many feet and voices; and then a long line of white-robed figures appeared, carrying torches. A bier was borne aloft in their midst, what it held covered with an embroidered pall that glistened with gold. These men recited prayers together as they went, and the river and bridge were for a moment bright with the glare of their torches. Then they disappeared, and a star-lighted quiet reigned again over the city of flowers.

Annette touched her husband's arm, and they reluctantly turned away from that spot where first they had experienced a feeling of peace.

And then, all night they plunged deeper and deeper into Italy, till morning and the Eternal City met their faces, and dazzled them.

“Thank God! I am in Rome at last,” exclaimed Lawrence. “Now nothing but death shall tear me away from it.”

Yes, there it was! the crumbling, stately city of the past, looking as if it had just risen from the bottom of the sea, after having been submerged for centuries. It was all a faded gold color, like autumn leaves, and its narrow streets were chilly, as though death had breathed through them. But its heights were warm and sunny, and its dusky trees and hedges were steeped in warmth, and over its magnificent decay the sky was fresh and blue, and the morning sunshine flowed bountifully.

“Now,” said Mrs. Gerald, becoming business-like at once, “we must first engage an apartment, and get our luggage into it. I think I know Italian enough for that, thanks to the songs I have learned.”

“Do you propose singing an aria to call a cab?” her husband asked. “And will you engage an apartment to the tune of ‘Hear me, Norma’?”

He smiled, and for a breath looked like his old self. But the next instant his face changed. The thought of his mother was enough to banish the smile for ever.

That thought had taken full possession of him, filling him with a terror, sorrow, and longing that burned in his heart like consuming fire. His flight had been made with no feeling but fear for himself; but with the first breath of the air of the city of saints, he inhaled a penitence which was without taint of weakness.

“Nothing but utter ruin could have brought me to my senses,” he said to his wife one day, when he had been sitting for a long while silent, gazing out at a little fountain that sprang into air in a vain effort to reach the laden orange-tree that overshadowed it.

She made no reply, and he needed none. She had let him go his own ways, keeping watch, but never interfering. She had nothing to do for him now but wait and see what sort of call he would make on her.

He wandered from church to church, and knelt at every shrine in the city of shrines. Wherever the signal lamp told that there some troubled soul had found help, he sent up his petition. He glanced with indifferent eyes past the rich marbles and gilding; but when a face looked from marble or canvas with an expression that touched his heart, there he made his appeal. The luxuries of life grew loathsome to him; fashion and gaiety were to him like a taunt of the evil one, who had used them as lures for his destruction. He hated the fineness of his own clothes, the daintiness of his food. None of the people he saw seemed to him enviable, save the poor monks in their coarse brown robes, with their bare feet thrust into rough sandals. In his own house he lived like an ascetic.

Now and then he would rouse himself from this stern and prolonged examen to think of his wife. She had claims on him which, perhaps, he was forgetting.

“You poor child!” he said, “we are not in India, that you should immolate yourself over my dead hopes. What can I do for you. I would free you, if I could.”

“You are not to think of me,” she replied quietly. “It is God who now commands you to think of yourself.”

“Yes!” he exclaimed, “I have made my own instruments of torture. Having thought of myself when it was a sin, I am forced to think of myself when it is a torment. And I escape that thought only to remember my victims. Annette, but one day is left of the four weeks. O my mother! if space could be annihilated, and I could be with you till it is over! If I could but know what has happened, what will happen, to her!”

He had spent the whole day in a church near by, sometimes praying before an altar, sometimes gazing at the pictures, in search of a divine meaning that might be hidden in them; but oftener, withdrawn to a dusky nook where only a single lamp burned before a head crowned with thorns, he gave himself up to grief.

“And what matter if I should?” he asked.

The wife waited till the servant had placed the dinner on the table and gone out before she spoke, and the moment of consideration had made her resolve on a stern answer, however willingly she would have given a tender one. She had long since discovered that her husband was one of those whom the flatteries of affection enervate instead of stimulating, and she was not sure enough of a radical change having taken place in him to yield to her own impulse to soothe and persuade when reproof might be more effectual.

“Of all the gifts which God has bestowed on you,” she said, “you have cast away every one but life; but with that life you may yet atone, and become a blessing to the world. It is your duty to watch over the only means left you of making reparation.”

He did not show the slightest displeasure at her reproof. On the contrary, there seemed to be something in it almost pleasant to him. Perhaps the suggestion that he might yet be a blessing in the world, incredible as that appeared, inspired him with an undefined hope. He dwelt thoughtfully on her words in a way that was becoming habitual to him whenever she spoke with peculiar seriousness, and Annette, seeing his humility, was half sorry for having put it to the test. With a confused impulse to give him at least some pitiful and perilous comfort, she poured a glass of wine, and placed it by him, well aware that for weeks he had not drunk any.

He put it away decidedly. “I would as soon drink poison, Annette,” he said reproachfully. “I did not think that you would offer it to me.”

She withdrew the glass immediately, ashamed of her weakness, and making a hasty apology. “If I had known you had made any resolution on the subject, I would not have offered it,” she said. “Forgive me! I never will again.”

“Oh! there was no resolution needed,” he said. “If you had been burned almost to death once, would you need to resolve not to go into the fire again? I fancy the sight of it would be enough. But I think I may promise never again to take wine, unless I should be commanded to by some one who knows better than I.”

His wife did not reply. This was a degree of asceticism which she had not expected and was afraid to trust. She had expected him to refuse indulgences, but not consolations. Indeed, she did not now understand her husband, and her hope of his redemption was but a trembling one. This self-denial might be only another illustration of that instability which rushes from one extreme to the other, only to return to its first excess.

This soul had made such an advance as to be conscious of some such fortitude infused into it. Lawrence Gerald had no fear of falling into his former sins. He might have the misery of seeing the destruction he had brought on others, might be himself destroyed by a sorrow and remorse too great to bear; but he had an immovable conviction that he could never again return to his old ways nor commit any grave transgression. It was this conviction which had made him say that nothing but destruction could have brought him to his senses.

“I like that church you took me to this morning,” he said, walking slowly up and down the room. “The others, many of them, seem to me fit only for the happy. They are all display and confusion and sight-seers, with scarcely a nook in them where a person in trouble can hide. They do not give me any impression of sacredness. But this one is so quiet and sober, and there are no people standing about with guide-books, talking aloud while you are praying or trying to pray. Then there is a little place, half chapel, half vestibule, between the church and the sacristy, where a side door enters the church, with an Ecce Homo in a little shrine; and there you can be quite private, without any one staring at you. I shall go to that church altogether.”

The church he spoke of was Santa Maria della Pace.

“It is Our Lady of Peace,” his wife said, “and was built to commemorate the peace of Christendom. I thought it would please you. Surely some special consolation and tranquillity should linger about a temple built and cemented with such an intention. I like it, too, better than most others we have visited, though it is not so splendid as many.”

She did not tell him that, after having left his side, when the early Mass was over, she had lingered in the church till it was closed at noon, not to watch him, but to be near him. Requesting the sacristan to withdraw the curtain covering the Four Sibyls of Raphael, she had seated herself before the chapel opposite, and divided her attention between that matchless vision and the unquiet figure that moved about the church. Once he had come near, but without seeming aware of her presence, and, standing at her side, had gazed with her. And while he gazed, she had seen the trouble in his face grow still for a moment. The noble serenity of that composition, so soothing to eyes wearied by the sprawling magnificence of Michael Angelo and the ever-present, dishevelled, wind-tossed figures of Bernini, lifted his soul to a higher plane. Even when he sighed and turned away, as if not willing to allow himself the pleasure of looking at so much beauty, he carried something of that spirit of harmony with him.

He shook his head. “I would rather not take anything to make me sleep, Ninon. And to-night I would not sleep, if I could. But I will lie down here a little while; for I am tired, now I think of it.”

He threw himself on the sofa, and she placed a screen before him, and closed the window near his head, so that even the soft plashing of the fountain was shut out, and the small notes of birds that twittered in the great pine-tree in the garden. And after a little while, finding him still restless, she went to the piano, and sang how God sent Elias to reassure and comfort a doubting and tempted soul. The notes flowed with a soothing murmur from under her fingers, and her voice, no longer the brilliant, ringing tones he had taken such pride in, was so low it might be a spirit singing:

Ending, she listened a moment, then stole across the room, and looked behind the screen. Lawrence was sleeping, with his head thrown back, his beautiful profile and moist, dark curls thrown out strongly by the garnet cushions and pillow.

She went to the window, and seated herself on a footstool near it, wrapping the long red curtains about her, and leaning against the wall. The sculptured marble of that stately salon was cold against her cheek; a flock of doves wheeling about over the garden caught some last rays of the sun on their wings, and threw them down over her, so that little white wings seemed to be fluttering all around the room; the casement slipped open, and the sound of tossing waters and twittering birds again became audible; but the watcher there took no note of these things. She was looking at the figure stretched on the sofa, and thinking that in all Rome there was no ruin so mournful and so terrible. He was like some fair column stricken from out a temple and cast aside into the dust; not touched by the hand of time, that, with its slow to-and-fro of days and nights, and seasons and years, lulls all the pain of decay to sleep, but broken and scathed, as if by lightning.

While she looked, he stirred, and opened his eyes; and the sympathetic pain with which she saw how he came back to a consciousness of his position almost drew an outcry from her. The first tranquil, half-wondering glance which saw, instead of the familiar surroundings of his childhood and youth, that immense room, with its profuse hangings and painted ceiling, and the long windows opening like doors; then the brief flash of startled questioning; lastly, the anguish of full recollection.

“O my God! my God!” he exclaimed, and hid his face in the cushions again.

She was at his side in a moment.

“Let us go out for a long drive, Lawrence,” she said. “There will be a bright moonlight to-night, and we can see so many places by it. Come! I will send for a carriage at once. There is nothing else for either of us to do.”

Nothing could have shown more clearly the change in Lawrence Gerald than his manner of receiving this proposal. Instead of expressing at once his aversion, and reproaching his wife that she could believe it possible for him to go sight-seeing at such a time, he stopped to consider if what she thought best might not be best, however it should seem to him.

“You must think for me now, Annette,” he said with a sort of despair. “You know I do not wish to seek pleasure nor distraction; but I suppose I must live.”

She sent for a carriage at once, and they went out under the full moon that was beginning to replace, with its pearly southern lights and northern shadows, the fading cross-lights of the sun. They drove to the Colosseum, not yet despoiled of its sacred emblems, and, kneeling there in the dust, made the stations in their own way. Annette named each one as they reached it, then left her husband to make his meditation, or to utter the ejaculation that started up from his tormented heart, as sharp as a blade from its sheath.

At last they stood together by the crucifix, with the moonlight falling on them and through the great arches in a silvery rain.

Annette saw her husband wipe his forehead, though the night was cool. He breathed heavily, and looked at the earth beneath his feet, as if he saw through it, and beheld the martyr lying where he fell centuries before.

“O my dear!” she said, “I know that there is no lion like remorse. But is it no comfort to you that you are not alone?”

“It is both a comfort and a pain,” he answered gently. “I should be desolate without you, and I should have done something desperate, perhaps, if I had been alone. You must understand my gratitude and my regret without expecting me to express them. I cannot speak. I know I have wronged you bitterly, and that you are an angel of goodness to me; but I can say no more about it. If I were at my mother's feet this moment, I should be speechless. I cannot pray even. I acknowledge the justice of God, and will endure whatever he sends. That is all I can say.”

He had forced himself to speak, she perceived, with a great effort. The season of complaints and outcries had gone past, and he had entered on the way of silence.

They went out, and left the ruin to its solemn tenants—the gliding shadows, which might be the troubled ghosts of the slayers, and the floating lights, which might be the glorified souls of the slain, visiting the loved spot where they had seen the heavens open for them.

The streets were nearly deserted when the two returned to them, their horses walking. They stopped at the fountain of Trevi, leaned awhile on the stone rail, and watched the streams that burst in snowy foam all along the front.

“Yes,” he said, “but they have not sinned; they have only suffered. I have always thought, Annette, that the saints have the easier life. You know we are told that the way of the transgressor is hard.”

“But the saints did not choose that life because it was the easier,” she replied. “They gave no thought to such a reward, but it was bestowed on them; and probably, when they chose, the other way seemed the easier, in spite of what the preacher says. The person who chooses a good life because it is the easier will never persevere in it; for the devil will always persuade him that he has made a mistake, and, since he chose from a selfish motive, God will owe him no help. The saints took what was hard, and what seemed the hardest because it was right, and left the consequences with God; and they had their reward. The sinner takes what seems the easiest, and thinks only of himself; and he, too, has his reward. Do not the waters look lovely? They are so fresh and new! How beautiful an image it is to compare divine grace to a fountain!”

They drove on through the town, across the bridge of S. Angelo, and saw the angel sheathing his sword—or was he unsheathing it?—against the sky, and, leaving their carriage at the entrance of the piazza of S. Peter's, walked across it to that majestic temple, which, more than any other, and at that hour more than ever, seemed worthy of the Spouse of the Spirit. Golden and white, the mystical flood of moonlight veiled it, rippling along its colonnades, glittering in its fountains, setting a pavement of chalcedony across the piazza and up the wide ascent, and trembling round the dome that swelled upward like a breast full with the divine milk and honey with which the church nourishes her children.

Lawrence stopped near the obelisk.

“The first question the church asked of me when I was brought before her, an infant,” he said, “was what I had come to ask of her, and my sponsors answered for me, Faith. Now once again she asks the same question.”

He was silent a moment, looking up at the church, but with eyes that saw only the sacred Mother. Tears rolled down his face, and his lips trembled; but there was no sign of that desperate passion which had so worn him. “I ask for forgiveness and perseverance,” he said.

She observed that he did not ask for peace.

He went forward to the steps, and knelt there; and as he wept and prayed, his wife heard ever the same petition that God would have mercy on his mother, that in some way he would spare her the blow that threatened to fall upon her, and that she might know how he loved her and mourned his ingratitude.

Annette withdrew from her husband, and paced to and fro not far away. She, too, had a mother who was about to be stricken with grief on her account, and whom she might never again see in life.

She had almost forgotten her husband and how time was flying, when she heard his voice at her side.

“My poor Annette, I am killing you,” he said. “Come home. See! the day is breaking.”

The east was, indeed, growing pale with the early dawn, and the western colonnade was throwing long shadows as the moon declined. It was time for them to return. Chilled and exhausted, they entered their carriage, and were driven home.

The dawn of that same day, when in its course the sun rose from the Atlantic, and brightened the New England shore, saw Mrs. Gerald and Honora Pembroke go to early Mass together.

F. Chevreuse had visited them the morning before, and requested them to go to communion that day, and pray for themselves, their friends, and for his intention.

“I have a difficult duty to perform,” he said, “and I want all the help I can get. So make yourselves as saintly as possible, my dear friends. Confess and prepare yourselves for holy communion as if it were to be your last, and pray with all your strength, and do not allow a single smallest venial sin to touch you all day.”

F. Chevreuse often asked them to pray for his intention, and all they observed in this was his unusual earnestness. It had the effect of making them also unusually earnest in their devotion. Mrs. Gerald was, indeed, so absorbed that she failed to notice that when Honora came from the priest's house, where she had been just before evening, she did not look quite well. F. Chevreuse had requested her to come there from her school, before going home, and she had been with him nearly an hour.

“So you have been to confession,” Mrs. Gerald said, arranging the tray for their tea. “I thought we would go there together this evening.”

She spoke in a very gentle, almost absent way; for she had been saying, as she went about, all the short prayers she could remember to the Blessed Virgin, and would resume them presently.

“So we will go together,” Miss Pembroke replied. “But I wanted to see F. Chevreuse this afternoon.”

She seated herself in a shady corner of the room, and opened her prayer-book; but it trembled so in her hand that she was forced to lay it aside, and pretend to be occupied with her rosary instead. Now and then she stole a glance at her companion, and saw with thankfulness that she was entirely occupied with her devotions. As she went about, preparing with dainty care their simple meal, her lips were moving; and sometimes she would pause a moment to bless herself, or to kiss the crucifix suspended from her neck, or to dwell on some sweet thought she had found hidden in a little prayer, like a blossom under a leaf.

And later in the evening, when the two returned from the priest's house, there was nothing to attract attention in Miss Pembroke's manner; for they sat reading and meditating till it was bed-time. It was their custom, since they lived alone, to prepare thus strictly for the reception of the Holy Eucharist.

Mrs. Gerald stood a minute before the embers of the dying fire, when they were ready to go up-stairs, the hand she had stretched for the bed-candle resting on the edge of the mantel-piece near it. “How peaceful we are here, Honora!” she said in her soft way, yet rather suddenly.

Miss Pembroke was bending to push the few remaining coals back, and her reply was indistinct, yet sounded like an affirmative.

“We have so much to be grateful for,” Mrs. Gerald went on. “I do not think that we could be more comfortable. I am sure that greater riches would disturb me. Indeed, I never wanted riches, except for Lawrence; and now he does not need them. I can truly say that I have all I desire.”

Miss Pembroke did not reply nor look up. She only stooped lower, and stretched her hands out over the coals, as if to warm them. Yet the two had always been so in harmony that her silence seemed to be assent.

“F. Chevreuse spoke beautifully to me to-night,” Mrs. Gerald continued, still lingering. “He kept me some time talking after I had made my confession; and, what is unusual with him, he spoke of himself. He said that all the favors he has to ask of God are for others; but that when he comes to pray for himself, he can only say, ‘Amen.’ Now and then, he said, he thinks to ask some special favor; but when he lifts his eyes to heaven, only one word comes: ‘Amen! amen!’ I did not understand, while he spoke, how much it meant; but I have been thinking it over since I came home, and I see that the word may include all that a Christian need say.”

A murmured “Yes!” came from Honora, who turned her head aside that the candle might not shine in her face. “And now, dear Mrs. Gerald, since we are to rise early, we had better go to bed. Can I do anything for you? Is there anything to do to-night?”

“Nothing, thank you, dear!”

They went up-stairs together, and, when they parted, Miss Pembroke embraced her friend with unusual tenderness. “May you have a good night's sleep!” she said; and, in the anguish of her heart, could almost have added, “And may you never wake!”

For F. Chevreuse had wisely judged it best to prepare her to sustain her friend when the hour of trial should come; and Honora, better than any other perhaps, understood what that shock would be.

“Go out in the morning and dismiss your school for the day,” the priest had said to her. “Then return home immediately, and make some excuse for it. You will easily be able to plead a headache, I fancy. Tell Mrs. Gerald that F. O'Donovan is coming to see her, so that she may not go out. And pray, my child, pray! What else is there for any of us to do in this terrible world but pray?”

Honora was obliged to make her excuses before going to school, for Mrs. Gerald at length noticed her altered looks, and almost insisted on dismissing the school for her. But she would not allow that.

“I shall feel better to go out than to sit in the house waiting,” she said, quite truly. “But I will come back at once. Pray do not be anxious about me. You know I am strong and healthy.”

When she returned, she found that Mrs. Gerald had, with motherly affection, made every preparation for her comfort. A deep sofa was pushed into a shady corner of the sitting-room, pillows and a shawl were laid ready, and, as she entered the room, she perceived the pleasant odor of pennyroyal, their favorite remedy for colds and headaches.

Honora submitted to be made an invalid of, since this tender soul could have no greater pleasure than to relieve suffering; allowed herself to be assisted to the sofa; let Mrs. Gerald arrange the pillows under her head and cover her with the shawl; then drank obediently the remedy offered her. But all the while her heart was sinking with an agony of apprehension, and she listened breathlessly for a step which was to bring doom to this unconscious victim.

“Now what else can I do for you, dear?” her nurse asked, looking vainly to see what had not been done.

Honora answered, “Nothing”; but, recollecting that something might be needed, if not for her, added, “You might place a glass of water and the camphor-bottle here where I can reach them.”

Mrs. Gerald brought them, from the mere pleasure of serving. “But you must not drink the water, for you are to be kept warm,” she said. “Your hands are quite cold now. And, you know, camphor never does you any good.”

She was about turning away when Honora took her hand, and detained her. She dared not look up, but she held the hand close to her cheek on the pillow. “Dear friend,” she said in a stifled voice, “it sometimes almost hurts me to remember how good and kind you have always been to me. I hope I have never seemed ungrateful; I have never felt so. But in future I want to be more than ever to you. Let me be your daughter, and live with you always. I do not want to go away with any one else.”

“My daughter!” said Mrs. Gerald, full of loving surprise and pleasure; and stooped to leave a kiss on the girl's forehead.

“And now, dear mother,” said Honora, “do not fancy that I am very sick. In an hour, all will be over.”

Mrs. Gerald smiled at this promise of sudden cure.

“Then I will leave you quiet a little while, and go out to water my plants. The seeds have come up which I sowed in the tracks my other two children made; and in a day or two, when Lawrence and Annette come home, their footprints will be quite green.”

She spoke with a gentle gaiety, for she was happy. So much affection had been shown her, she seemed to be of such help and value to those she loved best, that life assumed for her an aspect of spring and; youth, and a gladness long unknown to her rose up in her heart.

As she left the room, Honora looked eagerly after her, raising herself on her elbow, as soon as she was out of sight, and listening toward the door. When she heard her step on the veranda, she started off the sofa, and ran to look out through a blind into the garden. Mrs. Gerald was on her knees by the precious tracks, which she had carefully enclosed with slender pegs of wood, and was sprinkling with water the tiny blades of green that grew thickly inside. A soft and tender smile played round her lips, and the wrinkles that pain and anxiety sometimes drew in her face were all smoothed away. The spring morning hung over her like a benediction, silent and bright, not a breath of wind stirring; and in that secluded street, with its cottages and embowering trees, she was as safe from public observation as she would have been in the country.

Honora glanced at the clock. It wanted five minutes of ten.

“Five minutes more of happiness!” she murmured, and, from faintness, sank on her knees before the window, looking out still with her eyes fixed on that quiet, bending figure.

Mrs. Gerald stretched her hand and slowly made the sign of the cross over each one of those precious footprints. “May all their steps be toward heaven!” she whispered. “May angels guard them now and for ever, and may the blessings of the poor and the suffering spring up wherever they go, like these flowers, in their path.”

She rose and stood looking off into distance, tears of earnest feeling glistening in her eyes.

“Two minutes longer!” murmured Honora, who felt as if the room were swimming around her, so that she had to grasp the window-ledge for support. She could not see, but she heard a step on the sidewalk, and, though it was more measured than usual, there was no possibility of mistaking it. Only one step would come in that way and stop at their gate this morning. She heard F. O'Donovan's voice, and presently the two came into the entry together.

“Perhaps you had better come into the parlor,” Mrs. Gerald was saying. “Honora is lying down in there. She has a bad headache this morning.”

“Nevertheless, we will go in and see her,” was the reply.

Miss Pembroke started up, frightened at her own weakness. It would never do to fail now, when all the strength she could show would be needed. She had only time to seat herself on the sofa when they entered the room.

“My dear child! why did you not lie still?” Mrs. Gerald exclaimed. “I am sure F. O'Donovan would excuse you.”

“I would rather sit up, if you will come and sit by me,” Honora answered; and, taking Mrs. Gerald's hands, drew her down to the sofa, and sat there holding her in a half embrace.

The lady noticed with surprise that no greeting passed between the priest and Honora, and that he had not uttered a word of sympathy for her illness, nor, indeed, scarcely glanced at her. He went to the window, and opened one of the blinds.

“Allow me to have a ray of sunshine in the room,” he said. “Why should we shut it out? It is like divine love in a sorrowful world.”

Mrs. Gerald had hardly time to notice this somewhat unusual freedom of manner on the part of F. O'Donovan, for, as he came and seated himself near her, she was struck by the paleness and gravity of his face.

“Are you ill? Has anything happened?” she asked hastily; but he saw that in her anxiety there was no thought of danger to herself. It was a friendly solicitude for him; and she instantly glanced at Honora, as if connecting her illness with his altered appearance. That her young friend might have some cause of trouble seemed to her quite possible; for she had never been able to disabuse her mind of the belief that Honora had become more interested in Mr. Schöninger than she would own, and that she had never recovered entirely from the shock of his disgrace.

“I have great news to tell you,” said F. O'Donovan. “Mr. Schöninger is proved innocent, and will immediately be set at liberty.”

“The real criminal has confessed,” the priest went on; “and the confession and the circumstances are all of a sort to excite our deepest compassion. For it was not a deliberate crime, but only one of those steps which a man who has once consented to walk in the wrong path seems compelled to take. The poor fellow was deceived, and led on as all sinners are. He was in pecuniary difficulties, and yielded to a temptation to take F. Chevreuse's money, intending to repay it. The rest followed almost as a matter of course. Mother Chevreuse defended her son's property, and the poor sinner had to secure what he had risked so much to obtain, and escape the disgrace of detection. Others were approaching, and he was desperate. He gave an unlucky push, with no intention but to free himself, and the devil looked out for the result. But, if you could know how entirely that poor soul has repented, not only the fatal step in which his errors ended, but every smallest fault that led to it, you would have only pity for him. Mother Chevreuse died a good and holy woman, full of years and good works, and perhaps her death will be the cause of one man being a saint. He promises everything for the future, and that with a fervor which no one can doubt. He acknowledges the justice of any contumely and suffering and loss which may befall him. The only thought too hard for him to bear is that of the sorrow he has brought on his own family. If he could suffer alone, he would not complain; he would suffer tenfold, if it were possible, to spare those he loves.”

Mrs. Gerald had listened with intense interest to this story, and when it was ended she drew a long breath. “Poor man!” she sighed. “Has he a wife?”

“Yes; he has a wife who is all devotion to him, and who will follow him to the last. She will never be separated from him.”

“Will she go to prison with him? Will she be allowed to do that?” Mrs. Gerald asked in surprise.

“Oh! it is not a question of imprisonment,” the priest replied. “He has escaped, and will probably never be taken. His confession was written, sealed, and entrusted to a priest, to be opened at a certain time. It was opened this morning.”

The two watched Mrs. Gerald with trembling anxiety as she sat a moment with downcast eyes, musing over this strange story. Honora did not dare to breathe or stir, lest she should loosen the thunderbolt that hung suspended over their heads, ready to drop, and the priest was inwardly praying for wisdom to speak the right word.

“I hope he has no mother,” Mrs. Gerald said, without looking up.

“That is the hardest part of all,” said F. O'Donovan. “He has a mother. It is that which renders his remorse so terrible. But fortunately she is a Christian woman, who will know how to bend to the will of God, and leave her afflictions at his feet. She will be comforted by the thought that her son is a sincere penitent, and is by this awful lesson put for ever on his guard against sins which might otherwise have seemed to him trivial.”

“She does not yet know,” replied the priest, almost in a whisper, and stopped there, though other words seemed about to follow.

She gazed at him in surprise, and her look began to grow strange. She only looked intently, but said nothing; and in that dreadful silence Honora Pembroke's arm closed tightly about her waist, and her breath trembled on the mother's paling cheek.

“Cast yourself into the arms of God!” exclaimed F. O'Donovan. “Do not think! Do not fear nor look abroad. Hide yourself in the bosom of God! Sin and sorrow are but passing clouds, but heaven and hope and peace are eternal!”

Those beautiful violet eyes that had wept so many tears, now dry and dilating, were fixed upon him, and the face changed slowly. One wave of deep red had flown over it and sunk, and from pale it had grown deathly white, and over that whiteness had stolen a faint gray shade.

“Mother! mother! speak!” cried Honora Pembroke, weeping; but the form she clasped was rigid, and the face was beginning to have a blank, unnatural expression.

“Live for your son's sake!” said F. O'Donovan, taking in his her cold hands—“live to see his repentance, to see him win the forgiveness of the world and of God.”

But that blankness overspread her face, and the light in her fixed eyes grew more dim.

The priest stood up, still holding strongly one of her hands, and with his other made the sign of the cross over her, giving with it the final absolution. Then he seated himself beside her, and, while Honora fell at her feet, put his arm around the rigid form, and touched the cheeks with his warm, magnetic hand, and pleaded tenderly and with tears, as if she had been his own mother, now a word of human love, now a word of divine hope; and suddenly he stopped, and Honora, with her face hidden in Mrs. Gerald's lap, heard him exclaim, “Depart, Christian soul, out of the body, in the name of the Father who created thee, in the name of the Son who redeemed thee, and in the name of the Holy Ghost who has sanctified thee.”

She started up with a faint cry, and saw that Mrs. Gerald's head had dropped sideways on to her shoulder, her eyes were half-closed, and her relaxing form was sinking backward, supported by F. O'Donovan.

How it happened she did not know, but almost at the same instant Mrs. Macon entered the room followed by a doctor, and to Honora's confused sense it seemed as though helpers were all about and she was separated from her friend. She heard F. O'Donovan's voice repeating the prayers for the dead, and presently the weeping responses of the servant, but she was powerless to join them.

She roused herself only when she heard the priest speak her name. “Did I make any mistake? Did I do well, do you think?” he asked anxiously. “I did not know any better way.”

Honora opened her eyes and looked about.

“There was no better way,” she said. “The result would have been the same in any case, and she suffered only a minute.”

Tears were swimming in his fine eyes.

“She has, indeed, hidden herself in the bosom of God, where no harm can reach her, and it is best so. We can see that it is most merciful for her. But for that unhappy son....”

“Do not name him!” exclaimed Miss Pembroke, shuddering. “I cannot think of him without abhorrence! See what ruin he has wrought wherever he has been. What has escaped him? Nothing! Do you, can you, believe there is hope for one whose soul is such an abyss of weakness and selfishness? He has stripped from me my dearest friends; he has smitten those who loved him best....”

She stopped, half from the bitter weeping that choked her words, half because the priest had laid his checking hand on her arm.

“The silence of death is in the house,” he said gently. “Do not disturb it by anger. Leave Lawrence Gerald to the lashes of his guilty conscience. Believe me, it will be punishment enough. Forgive him, and pray for him.”

“Not yet! I cannot yet!” she protested. “He has been forgiven too much. But I will say no more. I am sorry I should have spoken so in her home.”

“Come out into the air of the garden a little while; it will refresh you,” the priest urged. “I must go directly to F. Chevreuse, but I will return. He went to Mrs. Ferrier more than an hour ago, and was to wait there for me or come this way to learn the result. Poor F. Chevreuse! he is sorely tried. Everything rests on him. Don't sit here in the dark any longer. Come!”

“You had better go, Miss Pembroke. You can do nothing here,” Mrs. Macon said to her.

She went out and hid herself in a little arbor that had been a favorite retreat of Mrs. Gerald's on warm summer days, and sitting there, too stunned for weeping, now that the first burst of tears was dried, tried to recollect and realize what had happened.

As she sat there she heard presently the trampling of horses and the roll of a carriage, and mechanically leaned forward to see who was passing, but without in the least caring. The bright bays and the sparkling harness were very familiar to her eyes, and she saw that Mrs. Ferrier herself was in the carriage. The woman's face was red and swollen with weeping and excitement, and as she passed the cottage she put up her hand as if she would have shut it from her sight. Evidently her interview with F. Chevreuse had been a stormy one, and had left her in anything but a charitable frame of mind.

Miss Pembroke looked indifferently at first, but a moment after she rose and took a step forward to see better; for F. Chevreuse and F. O'Donovan had appeared in the street in front of the carriage and stopped it, and the elder priest was speaking sternly to Mrs. Ferrier.

“Where are you going?” he demanded.

“I am going to the prison to tell them to let Mr. Schöninger go free,” she answered defiantly. “I am going to take him to my house.”

“You are going to do nothing of the sort,” said the priest. “You have no right to, and will only do harm, and disgrace yourself.”

“I couldn't be more disgraced than I am already, with that ...” she began in a loud voice, but F. Chevreuse stopped her.

“Silence!” he said authoritatively. “You are insane.”

“John, drive on!” she called out of the window.

“John, you will not drive a step further,” said the priest in a low voice.

“You'd better do what he says, ma'am,” said John, leaning down from the box. “And you'd better not talk so loud. People are beginning to notice.”

“I should like to know what you think of yourself for a priest, making my own servants disobey me,” the poor woman cried, relapsing into tears. And then, instantly recovering her spirit, she added, “If I cannot go to the prison, I will know where my poor daughter is. I believe Mrs. Gerald could tell. She must know where they are hid. I will have Annette back again.”

“You had better come in and ask Mrs. Gerald,” F. Chevreuse said calmly. “Do not hesitate! It will, perhaps, be better for you to see her.”

She shrank a little, yet could not bear to remain inactive. To her mind, she had been hushed, and imposed on, and silenced by everybody, in order that this worthless criminal might ruin her daughter's happiness, and obtain possession of her money, and she was burning to pour her anger out on some one. F. Chevreuse's authoritative interference, while she yielded to it, only exasperated her more. “I will go in and find where Annette is,” she said resolutely, and stepped out of her carriage, too much excited to stumble.

Honora Pembroke came forward and stood between her and the door, looking in astonishment at the two priests who followed her.

“Let her go in!” F. O'Donovan said.

She was obliged to, indeed, for Mrs. Ferrier's strong hand set her aside as if she had been a feather.

The woman entered with a haughty step and a high head, her silks rustling about her through the solemn silence, and walked straight to the sitting-room. Mrs. Macon met her at the door, but she put her aside, and took a step into the room; only one step, and then she stopped short, and uttered a cry.

“See how that mother heard the news!” said F. Chevreuse in a low voice at her side. “Have you any questions to ask her?”

Mrs. Ferrier retreated a step, and leaned against the door-frame. They all drew back and left her a full view of the silent form stretched on the sofa, and only Honora Pembroke's weeping disturbed the silence.

“You don't say that it killed her!” she exclaimed in a low, frightened voice; then, before they could answer, she threw up her arms, and ran across the room. “You poor dear!” she sobbed. “You poor, broken-hearted dear!”

She flung herself on her knees beside the sofa, and embraced and wept over the motionless form there, all her anger, all thought of self, forgotten in a generous and loving pity and grief.

F. Chevreuse glanced at his brother priest with a faint, sad smile. “Her heart is right,” he said. “It is always right.”

To Be Continued.