At that moment Bruno came bounding up. He looked from his master to Laura in her hat, and seemed to hesitate. Then, as she descended the steps, he sprang after her. Laura began to run; the two dogs leapt about her; her light voice, checking or caressing, came back to Helbeck on the spring wind. He watched her and her companions so long as they were in sight--the golden hair among the trees, the dancing steps of the girl, the answering frolic of the dogs. Then he turned back to his sister, his grave mouth twitching. "How thankful she is to get rid of us!" He laughed out. The priest laughed, too, more softly. "It was the first time, I presume, that Miss Fountain had ever been within a Catholic church?" he said to Augustina. Augustina flushed. "Of course it is the first time. Oh! Alan, you can't think how strange it is to her." She looked rather piteously at her brother. "So I perceive," he said. "You told me something, but I had not realised----" "You see, Alan--" cried Augustina, watching her brother's face,--"it was with the greatest difficulty that her mother got Stephen to consent even to her being baptized. He opposed it for a long time." Father Bowles murmured something under his breath. Helbeck paused for a moment, then said: "What was her mother like?" "Everyone at Cambridge used to say she was 'a sweet woman'--but--but Stephen,--well, you know, Alan, Stephen always had his way! I always wonder she managed to persuade him about the baptism." She coloured still more deeply as she spoke, and her nervous infirmity became more pronounced. Alas! it was not only with the first wife that Stephen had had his way! Her own marriage had begun to seem to her a mere sinful connection. Poor soul--poor Augustina! Her brother must have divined something of what was passing in her mind, for he looked down upon her with a peculiar gentleness. "People are perhaps more ready to talk of that responsibility than to take it," he said kindly. "But, Augustina,--" his voice changed,--"how pretty she is!--You hardly prepared me----" Father Bowles modestly cast down his eyes. These were not questions that concerned him. But Helbeck went on, speaking with decision, and looking at his sister: "I confess--her great attractiveness makes me a little anxious--about the connection with the Masons. Have you ever seen any of them, Augustina?" No--Augustina had seen none of them. She believed Stephen had particularly disliked the mother, the widow of his cousin, who now owned the farm jointly with her son. "Well, no," said Helbeck dryly, "I don't suppose he and she would have had much in common." "Isn't she a dreadful Protestant--Alan?" "Oh, she's just a specimen of the ordinary English Bible-worship run mad," he said, carelessly. "She is a strange woman, very well known about here. And there's a foolish parson living near them, up in the hills, who makes her worse. But it's the son I'm thinking of." "Why, Alan--isn't he respectable?"