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