"And you won't bend a single prejudice to--to save such a family possession--though I care for it so much?" He came up to her with outstretched hands. "I have been trying to save it all these weeks! Nothing but such a cause as this could have stood in the way. It is not a prejudice, darling--believe me!--it belongs, for me at any rate, to Catholic obligation." She took no notice of the hands. With her own she clung to the table behind her. "Why do you give so much to the Sisters? It is not right! They give a very bad education!" He stared at her. How pale she had grown--and this half-stifled voice!---- "I think we must be the judges of that," he said, dropping his hands. "We teach what we hold most important." "Nobody like Sister Angela ought to teach!" she cried--"you give money to bring pupils to Sister Angela. And she is not well trained. I never heard anyone talk so ignorantly as she does to Augustina. And the children learn nothing, of course--everyone says so." "And you are so eager to listen to them?" he said, with sparkling eyes. Then he controlled himself. "But that is not the point. I humbly admit our teaching is not nearly so good as it might be if we had larger funds to spend upon it. But the point is that I have promised the money, and that a number of arrangements--fresh teachers among them--are already dependent on it. Dearest, won't you recognise my difficulties, and--and help me through them?" "You make them yourself," she said, drawing back. "There would be none if you did not--hate--your fellow-citizens." "I hate no one--but I cannot aid and abet the English Church. That is impossible to me. Laura!" He observed her carefully. "I don't understand. Why do you say these things?--why does it hurt you so much?" "Oh! let me go," she cried, flinging his hand away from her. "Let me go!" And before he could stop her, she had fled to the door, and disappeared. * * * * * Helbeck and Augustina ate a lonely dinner. "You must have taken Laura too far this afternoon, Alan," said Mrs. Fountain fretfully. "She says she is too tired to come down again to-night--so very unlike her!" "She did not complain--but it may have been a long round," said her companion. * * * * * After dinner, Helbeck took his pipe into the garden, and walked for long up and down the bowling-green, torn with solitary thought. He had put up his pipe, and was beginning drearily to feel the necessity of going back to his study, and applying himself--if he could force his will so far--to some official business that lay waiting for him there, when a light noise on the gravel caught his ear. His heart leapt. "Laura!" She stopped--a white wraith in the light mist that filled the garden. He went up to her overwhelmed with the joy of her coming--accusing himself of a hundred faults.