A smiling nun took charge of each party as it arrived. Lady Geoghegan plied hers with questions, and received a series of quite uninforming answers. Her husband followed her, bent principally upon escaping from the precincts if he could. Already he was bored, and he knew that speeches from great men were in store for him if he were forced to linger. The Duchess of Drummin eyed each object presented to her notice gravely through long-handled glasses, but gave her attendant nun very little conversational help. Lady Josephine made every effort to be intelligent, and inquired in a dormitory where the looking-glasses were. She was amazed to hear that the nuns did, or failed to do, their hair--the head-dresses concealed the result of their efforts--without mirrors. Lord Eustace was preoccupied. Amid his unaccustomed surroundings he walked uncertain whether to keep his hat on his head or hold it in his hands. The English priest, whose name was Austin, got detached from Lady Geoghegan, and picked up a stray nun for himself. She took him, by his own request, straight to the chapel. He crossed himself with elaborate care on entering, and knelt for a moment before the altar. The nun was delighted. ‘So you, too, are a Catholic?’ ‘Certainly,’ he replied briskly--‘an English Catholic.’ ‘Ah! many of our priests go to England. Perhaps you have met Father O’Connell. He is on a London mission.’ ‘No,’ said Mr. Austin, ‘I do not happen to have met him. My church is in Yorkshire.’ The nun gazed at him in amazement. ‘Your church! Then you are---- ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I am a priest.’ Her eyes slowly travelled over him. They began at the gray trousers, passed to the blazer, resting a moment on the college arms, which certainly suggested the ecclesiastical, and remained fixed on his collar. After all, why should she, a humble nun, doubt his word when he said he was a priest? Perhaps he might belong to some order of which she had never heard. Eccentricities of costume might be forced on the English clergy by Protestant intolerance. She smothered her uncertainty, and took him at his word. They went together into the garden. Mr. Austin took off his hat before the tarnished Madonna, and crossed himself again. The nun’s doubts vanished. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that I should like to buy some of this tweed. Is it for sale?’ ‘Oh, certainly. Sister Aloysia will sell it to you. We are so glad, so very glad, when anyone will buy what our poor workers make. It is all a help to the good cause.’ ‘Now this,’ said Mr. Austin, fingering a bright-green cloth, ‘would make a nice lady’s dress. Don’t you think so?’ The nun cast down her eyes. ‘I do not know, Father, about dresses. Sister Aloysia, the Reverend Father wants to buy tweed to make a dress for ‘--she hesitated; perhaps it was his niece, but he looked young to have a full-grown niece--‘for his sister.’ Sister Aloysia looked round her, puzzled. She saw no Reverend Father. ‘This,’ said the other, ‘is Father--Father----’