Sisters' sake--to put them out of sight; that on the subject of balls and
theatres he spoke sometimes with a severity no member of the Metropolitan
Tabernacle could have outdone. What was that phrase he had dropped once
as to being "under a rule"? What was "The Third Order of St. Francis"?
She had seen a book of "Constitutions" in his study; and a printed card
of devout recommendations to "Tertiaries of the Northern Province" hung
beside his table. She half thirsted, half dreaded, to know precisely what
these things meant to him. But he was silent, and she shrank from asking.

Was he all the more rigid with himself on the religious side of late,
because of that inevitable scandal which his engagement had given to his
Catholic friends--perhaps because of his own knowledge of the weakening
effects of passion on the will? For Laura's imagination was singularly
free and cool where the important matters of her own life were concerned.
She often guessed that but for the sudden emotion of that miserable
night, and their strange meeting in the dawn, he might have succeeded in
driving down and subduing his love for her--might have proved himself in
that, as in all other matters, a good Catholic to the end. That she
should have brought him to her feet in spite of all trammels was food for
a natural and secret exultation. But now that the first exquisite days of
love were over, the trammels, the forgotten trammels, were all there
again--for the fretting of her patience. That his mind was often
disturbed, his cheerfulness overcast, that his letters gave him
frequently more pain than pleasure, and that a certain inward unrest made
his dealings with himself more stern, and his manner to those around him
less attractive than before,--these things were constantly plain to
Laura. As she dwelt upon them, they carried flame and poison through the
girl's secret mind. For they were the evidences of forces and influences
not hers--forces that warred with hers, and must always war with hers.
Passion on her side began to put forward a hundred new and jealous