‘Oh, here we are at the House!’ she cried suddenly, in a low tone of horror, and darted away from him up the steps to the open door. Sister Mary Jane was standing there unsuspicious, but visibly surprised. She had just parted with someone, whom poor Agnes, in her terror, ran against; for in the warmth of the discussion they had come up to the very gate of the House, the entrance to that sanctuary where lovers were unknown. Sister Mary Jane opened a pair of large blue eyes, which Oswald (being full of admiration for all things that were admirable) had already noted, and gazed at him, bewildered, letting Agnes pass without comment. He took off his hat with his most winning look of admiring respectfulness as he went on--no harm in winning over Sister Mary Jane, who was a fair and comely Sister, though no longer young. Would Agnes, he wondered, have the worldly wisdom to make out that he was an old acquaintance, or would she confess the truth? Would Sister Mary Jane prove a dragon, or, softened by her own beauty and the recollection of past homages, excuse the culprit? Oswald knew very well that anyhow, while he walked off unblamed and unblamable, the girl who had been only passive, and guilty of no more than the mildest indiscretion, would have to suffer more or less. This, however, did not move him to any regret for having compromised her. It rather amused him, and seemed to give him a hold over her. She could not take such high ground now and order him away. She was in the same boat, so to speak. Next time they met she would have something to tell which he would almost have a right to know. It was the establishing of confidence between them. Oswald did not reckon at a very serious rate the suffering that might arise from Sister Mary Jane’s rebuke. ‘They have no thumbscrews in those new convents, and they don’t build girls up in holes in the walls now-a-days,’ he said to himself, and, on the whole, the incident was less likely to end in harm than in good.