After dinner Helbeck, much troubled by the pinched features and pale cheeks of his guest, descended himself to the cellar in search of a particular Burgundy laid down by his father and reputed to possess a rare medicinal force. Mr. Williams was left standing before the hearth, and the famous carved mantelpiece put up by the martyr of 1596. As soon as Helbeck was gone he looked carefully--furtively--round the room. It was the look of the peasant appraising a world not his. A noise made by the wind at one of the old windows disturbed him. He looked up and was caught by a photograph that had been propped against one of the vases of the mantelpiece. It was a picture--recently taken--of Miss Fountain sitting on the settle in the hall with the dogs beside her. And it rendered the half-mocking animation of her small face with a peculiar fidelity. The young man was conscious of a strong movement of repulsion. Mr. Helbeck's engagement had sent a thrill of pain through a large section of the Catholic world; and the Jesuit had already divined a hostile force in the small and brilliant creature whose eyes had scanned him so coldly as she sat beside the Squire. He fell into a reverie, and took one or two turns up and down the room. "Shall I?" he said to himself in an excitement that was half vanity, half religion. * * * * * Half an hour later Laura was in the oriel window of the drawing-room, looking out through the open casement at the rising of a golden moon above the fell. Her mind was full of confusion. "Is he never to be free to say what he thinks and feels in his own house?" she asked herself passionately. "Or am I to sit by and see him sink to the level of these bigots?" Augustina was upstairs, and Laura, absorbed in her own thoughts and the night loveliness of the garden, did not hear Helbeck and Mr. Williams enter the room, which was as usual but dimly lighted. Suddenly she caught the words: "So you still keep her? That's good! One could not imagine this room without her." The voice was the voice of the Jesuit, but in a new tone--more eager, more sincere. What were they talking of?--the picture? And she, Laura, of course was hidden from them by the heavy curtain half drawn across the oriel. She could not help waiting for Helbeck's reply. "Ah!--you remember how she was threatened even when you first began to come here! I have clung to her, of course--there has always been a strong feeling about her in the family. Last week I thought again that she must go. But--well! it is too soon to speak--I still have some hopes---I have been straining every nerve. You know, however, that we must begin our new buildings at the orphanage in six weeks--and that I must have the money?" He spoke with his usual simplicity. Laura dropped her head upon the window-sill, and the tears rushed into her eyes. "I know--we all know--what you have done and sacrificed for the faith," said the younger man with emotion.