"Oh! he's just, broken-hearted. He can hardly bring himself to speak to Alan about it at all. Of course, Alan will get his dispensation for the marriage. They can't refuse it to him when they give it to so many others. But!"--she threw up her hands--"the Bishop asked me if Laura had been really baptized. I told him there was no doubt at all about it--though it was a very near thing. But her mother did insist that once. And it appears that if she hadn't----" She looked interrogatively at the priest. "The marriage could not have taken place," he said slowly. "No Catholic priest could have celebrated it, at least. There would have been a diriment impediment." "I thought so," said Augustina excitedly, "though I wasn't sure. There are so many dispensations nowadays." "Ah, but not in such cases as that," said the priest, with an unconscious sigh that rather startled his companion. Then with a sudden movement he pounced upon something on the further side of the table, nearly upsetting the tea-tray. Augustina exclaimed. "I beg your pardon," he said humbly; "it was only a nasty fly." And he dropped the flattened creature on the grass. Both relapsed into a melancholy silence. But several times during the course of it Mrs. Fountain looked towards her companion as though on the point of saying something--then rebuked herself and refrained. But when the priest had taken his leave, and Mrs. Fountain was left alone in the garden with the flowers and the autumn wind, her thoughts were painfully concerned with quite another part of the episcopal conversation from that which she had reported to Father Bowles. What right had the Bishop or anyone else to speak of "stories" about Laura? Of course, the dear Bishop had been very kind and cautious. He had said emphatically that he did not believe the stories--nor that other report that Mr. Helbeck's sudden proposal of marriage to Miss Fountain had been brought about by his chivalrous wish to protect the endangered name of a young girl, his guest, to whom he had become unwisely attached. But why should there be "stories," and what did it all mean? That unlucky Froswick business--and young Mason? But what had Mason to do with it--on that occasion? As Augustina understood, he had seen the child off from Froswick by the 8.20 train--and there was an end of him in the matter. As for the rest of that adventure, no doubt it was foolish of Laura to sit in the quarry till daylight, instead of going to the inn; but all the world might know that she took a carriage at Wryneck, half-way home, about four o'clock in the morning, and left it at the top gate of the park. Why, she was in her room by six, or a little after!