"Their compensations?" That meant the Mass and all the rest of this tyrannous clinging religion. What did it honestly mean to Mr. Helbeck--to anybody? She remembered her father's rough laugh. "There are twelve hundred men, my dear, belonging to the Athenaeum Club. I give you the bishops. After them, what do you suppose religion has to say to the rest of the twelve hundred? How many of them ever give a thought to it?" She raised her eyes, furtively, to Helbeck's face. In spite of its melancholy lines, she had lately begun to see that its fundamental expression was a contented one. That, no doubt, came from the "compensations." But to-day there was more. She was positively startled by his look of happiness as he strode silently along beside her. It was all the more striking because of the plain traces left upon him by Lenten fatigue and "mortification." It was Easter day, and she supposed he had come from Communion. A little shiver passed through her, caused by the recollection of words she had heard, acts of which she had been a witness, in the chapel during the foregoing week--words and acts of emotion, of abandonment--love crying to love. A momentary thirst seized her--an instant's sense of privation, of longing, gone almost as soon as it had come. Helbeck turned to her. "So this dance you are going to is on Thursday?" he said pleasantly. She came to herself in a moment. "Yes, on Thursday, at eight. I shall go early. I have engaged a fly to take me to the farm--thank you!--and my cousins will see me home. I am obliged to you for the key. It will save my giving any trouble." "If you did we should not grudge it," he said quietly. She was silent for a few more steps, then she said: "I quite understand, Mr. Helbeck, that you do not approve of my going. But I must judge for myself. The Masons are my own people. I am sorry they should have---- Well--I don't understand--but it seems you have reason to think badly of them." "Not of _them_," he said with emphasis. "Of my cousin Hubert, then?" He made no answer. She coloured angrily, then broke out, her words tumbling childishly over one another: "There are a great many things said of Hubert that I don't believe he deserves! He has a great many good tastes--his music is wonderful. At any rate, he is my cousin; they are papa's only relations in the world. He would have been kind to Hubert; and he would have despised me if I turned my back on them because I was staying in a grand house with grand people!" "Grand people!" said Helbeck, raising his eyebrows. "But I am sorry I led you to say these things, Miss Fountain. Excuse me--may I open this gate for you?"