"And behold I am with you even to the consummation of the world" passed through the priest's mind, and he answered, confidently: "Very sure, Mrs. Temple." The friends of Juliet marvelled greatly, when it became known to them that she had sent for the Catholic priest, and was actually seeking to learn the religion of her late husband. For they looked at the matter in its true light, and smiled at her simplicity, in believing she could be instructed in Protestantism by any "Romish priest," how good so ever he might chance to be. Against her own inclination, but from the advice of her new friend, she occasionally received her sisters and a few former acquaintances. They went away commiserating her condition, as being semi-imbecile, semi-lunatic. "She will get over this, go in society, and marry again," they prophesied. They were not the first false prophets who have arisen. A year later, when Juliet Temple was baptized into the Catholic Church, these same people said: "_They_ will get her into a convent, next, where she will awaken to a sense of her folly." Another false prophecy, for Juliet did not enter a convent, though she had serious thoughts of doing so. Though she became not a Sister of Charity, in fact, she did in deed, and atoned in after years for the frivolousness of her early life, by patient self-denials and well-directed benevolence. In the matter of Juliet's conversion, Father Duffy, as in every thing else, had done his work well. The widow of John Temple was no half-way Christian. She had put forth her hand in the way directed, and God had lifted her into the light. With her feet upon the rock of ages, she no more trembled under the impression of sinking beneath slippery waters. She was not ashamed to be seen by her former fashionable friends wending her way to St. Patrick's. When she knelt at the altar to receive the bread of life, she became not "indignant" that any humble Bridget knelt by her side; for, dearer to her the most lowly person who now had received the waters of Baptism than any lady who rode in her carriage. Through the priest, it was God's work and marvellous unto all eyes. CHAPTER XXI. "THE SPIDER AND THE FLY." Both Leonora and Estelle wrote to their distant brother of the danger of his daughter. She was under the sole care of one who was fast becoming bewitched with the superstitions of Catholicism.