And so the infamous nature of the pursuit of the earl and his son-in-law quite escaped her, and neither the diamond bracelet, nor Lord E. in his shirt at night in her room, awoke the faintest throb of alarm. All this to her and us was part of the eternal joke of nature. And a very, very few years afterwards, I learned, one who had loved her well and sought her far discovered her at night in the vicinity of the Haymarket, with paint upon her cheeks and lips, and the fatal brightness of consumption looking out of her hollow violet eyes. My remembrance of the rest of my stay at Lysterby fades away upon the heavy perfume of incense in the cold aisles of the cathedral, whither we were conducted by the nuns for the breathlessly interesting offices of Holy Week. It is a long dream of sombre tones and solemn notes, which I followed in a passionate absorption in the "Offices of Holy Week," printed in Latin and English, for which I paid the sum of four shillings. I studied those offices so diligently, followed them so accurately, that afterwards I could detect to a movement, a note, a Latin word, any error or omission in the Lenten services of the pro-cathedral of Dublin, where I must say the rites struck me as shorn of all impressiveness. But at Lysterby functions were rigidly correct. The evening office of Tenebræ was a funereal delight. The services of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday were religious excitements on which to live for months. I shut my eyes, even now in middle age, and I see again the long grey cathedral aisles dim in taper-light, altars hung in black, and the lean aristocratic visage of Father More above the surplice and violet stole, and I hear him chant in his thin, melodious voice, "Oremus, flectamus genua!" and listen again for the response, "Levate!" I cannot precisely define my sensations in this period. Religion with me was nothing but an intense emotion nourished upon incense, music, taper-lit gloom, and a mysterious sense of the intangible. It was in the fullest meaning of the word sensuous; but while its attraction lasted, nothing I have since known could be compared with it for intensity. While under its spell, you seem to float in the air, to touch the wings of the angels, to be yourself part of the heavenly sphere you aspire to attain. Rapture itself is a mean enough word to define your emotions. And then you come back to earth with a sense of unspeakable deception and surprise. You feel hungry, and loathe yourself for the vulgar need. Your ear is buffeted by loud earthly sounds instead of the roll of the organ and the monotonous solemnity of Gregorian chant.