Mary Jane very seldom went with the procession, and it was not etiquette to talk of what was seen or heard outside, and the Superior of the House was so occupied as to be beyond the possibility of gossip. So that she did not hear of the daily appearance of the intruder. Sister Catherine was short-sighted, and very much taken up with the demeanour of the girls. If she remarked him at all with her dim eyes, she took it for granted that he lived in the neighbourhood and was going to his occupation, whatever it might be, when the girls went out for their walk. ‘I don’t keep up the practice of recognising the people I knew in the world,’ she said on one occasion, seeing somebody taking off his hat. ‘Never mind whether it was for you or for me; it is best to take no notice--unless, indeed, with real friends.’ But she did not mention the incident to the Superior, and Agnes, though she trembled, said nothing. The daily encounter was like wine in her veins. It intoxicated her with a curious dreamy intoxication of the spirit. Her head was in the clouds as she walked, and she did not know which was real--the curious life which she passed like a dream in the House, or that glimpse of freedom and light and sunshine which she had abroad, light in which he stood enshrined like the young Saint Michael in the painted window. By degrees that moment of encounter became the principal fact in the day. Who was she to resist this fanciful, delicate worship? and Agnes did not know that it was to him no visionary reverential distant worship, but the most amusing and seductive pursuit in the world.