Elizabeth grinned. She was not without a humorous enjoyment of the situation. Our black veils, which throughout the week were considered decorous and devotional, indicated on Sundays--when white veils were in order--a depth of unpardoned and unpardonable depravity. When Elizabeth and I were condemned to wear ours to Sunday Mass and Vespers,--two little black sheep in that vast snowy flock,--we were understood to be, for the time, moral lepers, to be cut off from spiritual communion with the elect. We were like those eminent sinners who, in the good old days when people had an eye to effect, did penance in sheets and with lighted tapers at cathedral doors,--thus adding immeasurably to the interest of church-going, and to the general picturesqueness of life. The ordeal was not for us the harrowing thing it seemed. Elizabeth's practical mind had but a feeble grasp of symbols. Burne-Jones and Maeterlinck would have conveyed no message to her, and a black veil amid the Sunday whiteness failed to disturb her equanimity. As for me, I was content to wear what Elizabeth wore. Where MacGregor sat was always the head of the table. The one real sufferer was the innocent Madame Dane, whose Sabbath was embittered by the sight of two sable spots staining the argent field, and by the knowledge that the culprits were her own Second Cours children, for whom she held herself responsible. "She told me," said Elizabeth, "that if ever I let such a thing happen to me again, I shouldn't walk by her side all winter."