Yes, it must be so, and the sacrifice must be made. Once done, the deed could never be recalled. She would be held up as a bright example of piety, and she should again find her former peace, and satisfaction in prayer and penance and saintly reveries, and the doubts which disturbed her would depart forever. Then there was Sister Barbara—Sister Barbara whose coming she had expected and prepared for, with so much pleasure, who had been one of the elders of the order, and a pattern of sanctity. There had long existed not even the semblance of confidence between them, but Anne had no doubt she was as bad as Jack, every whit. She had seen a book in her hands which was no prayer-book—she was sure of that—and she was always reading it while her "Hours" and her rosary lay neglected day after day. Sister Barbara and Jack were always talking quietly together and exchanging smiles and glances. Besides, did she not go to hear Father William preach even after he had refused to celebrate masses for the dead, and declared his opinion that it was lawful for priests to marry if they saw fit? These and other indications convinced Anne that Sister Barbara was as bad as Jack—nay, worse, for was she not a nun, and had she not been a person in authority? Then there was her school! Was she to be allowed to pervert the children under her charge? The morning that Sister Barbara went away, Anne went to the Priory church, determined, as she said, to decide the matter one way or the other before she came home. The first person she met was Father Barnaby. In her excited state of mind, this encounter seemed a supernatural sign sent for the confirmation of her wavering resolution, and she did not rest till she had told him all. She could not indeed tell the place where Sister Barbara had taken refuge, for she did not know it, but she told all she did know about the matter. Father Barnaby was well pleased. He had come down, as Father John said, armed with a special commission for the searching out and destruction of heretical books and the suppression of heresy, and he was determined to carry through his work with an unsparing hand. It was a good omen to be thus met at the beginning, and served in some degree to counterbalance the chagrin he had felt at discovering that his chief prey had escaped him.