"In some ways," he replied thoughtfully, "it seems as though they must always have been here: it is impossible to conceive of life without them—now. In others, the time has gone so fast that it might be but yesterday they came." "When I was younger," Miss Esperance went on in her gentle, old voice, "I used to look forward with such dread to a lonely old age. I used to think ’what would life be if my father and my brothers died?’; and one by one they were all taken from me, and Archie was the last of our family—and he is dead. But the Lord has been very merciful. First he sent you to me, and then the children to us both: ’Goodness and mercy all my life have surely followed me.’" Miss Esperance paused, still smiling in the happy confidence of the peace that wrapped her round. If Mr. Wycherly did not answer it was not because he did not agree with Miss Esperance as to the wonderful workings of Providence. But speech on such subjects was to him almost impossible; and she, looking wistfully into his face, partly realised this. But she was not quite satisfied. Religion was, for her, so entirely the mainspring of her every impulse, her every action, that it was impossible for her in any way to separate it from the most ordinary daily doings; and to her it was as easy and as natural to confess her faith and her deepest feelings with regard to these matters as it was impossible to him. This inability on his part formed to a certain extent a barrier between them: a barrier which can only be broken down by mutual consent; and while he would have done, as in very truth he did, anything in the world to give her pleasure and peace of mind: this thing which she would have valued most, he could not give her. He could not talk about his religious views. In the silence that followed it is possible that there recurred to the minds of both an incident not wholly without bearing on their future intercourse. One Sabbath evening, shortly after he had gone to live with Miss Esperance at Remote, she asked him to "engage in prayer" at family worship—the "family" consisting of herself and Elsa. Mr. Wycherly complied readily enough, for he knew plenty of prayers: but when he prayed, he prayed for "the bishops and curates and all congregations committed to their charge"; he prayed for the "good estate of the Catholic Church here upon earth"; and, worst of all—it being the collect for the day—he prayed that "as thy Holy Angels always do thee service in heaven, so by thy appointment they may succour and defend us on earth." Never was such a scandal in a strictly Presbyterian household. Elsa proclaimed throughout the village that Miss Esperance had been induced to harbour an undoubted Puseyite, and it would not have surprised her in the least if he had prayed for the Pope himself.