“It's no time for honeyed words, Ellen, in the presence of a heavy calamity; but I 'd like to ask Mr. L'Estrange why, when he saw the danger of the theme they were discussing, he did not try to change the topic.” “So I did. I led him to talk of myself and my interests.” “An admirable antidote to excitement, certainly,” muttered Culduff to Temple, who seemed to relish the joke intensely. “You say that my father had been reading his letters. Did he appear to have received any tidings to call for unusual anxiety?” asked Augustus. “I found him, as I thought, looking very ill, careworn almost, when I entered. He had been writing, and seemed fatigued and exhausted. His first remark to me was, I remember, a mistake.” L'Estrange here stopped, suddenly. He did not desire to repeat the speech about being invited to the picnic. It would have been an awkwardness on all sides. “What do you call a mistake, sir?” asked Marion, calmly. “I mean he asked me something which a clearer memory would have reminded him not to have inquired after.” “This grows interesting. Perhaps you will enlighten us a little farther, and say what the blunder was.” “Well, he asked me how it happened that Julia and myself were not of the picnic; forgetting, of course, that we--we had not heard of it.” A deep flush was now spread over his face and forehead, and he looked overwhelmed with shame. “I see it all; I see the whole thing,” said Marion, triumphantly. “It was out of the worldliness of the picnic sprung all the saintly conversation that ensued.” “No, the transition was more gradual,” said L'Estrange, smiling; for he was at last amused at the asperity of this cross-examination. “Nor was there what you call any saintly conversation at all. A few remarks Colonel Bramleigh indeed made on the insufficiency of, not the Church, but churchmen, to resolve doubts and difficulties.” “I heartily agree with him,” broke in Lord Culduff, with a smile of much intended significance. “And is it possible; are we to believe that all papa's attack was brought on by a talk over a picnic?” asked Marion. “I think I told you that he received many letters by the post, and to some of them he adverted as being very important and requiring immediate attention. One that came from Rome appeared to cause him much excitement.” Marion turned away her head with an impatient toss, as though she certainly was not going to accept this explanation as sufficient. “I shall want a few minutes with Mr. L'Estrange alone in the library, if I may be permitted,” said the doctor, who had now entered the room after his visit to the sick man. “I hope you may be more successful than we have been,” whispered Marion, as she sailed out of the room, followed by Lord Culduff; and after a few words with Augustus, the doctor and L'Estrange retired to confer in the library.