to know while I am still with you--all that my strength will allow me to say. We can be together but a brief while longer; let us during that time forget everything save that we are mother and child." "Oh, mamma, mamma!" sobbed Janet, "are we brought together after all these years only to part again in so short a time?" "Even so, dearest. And why should we grieve that such is the case? Our parting is only for a time. No conviction was ever more deeply impressed upon me than that is. As I stand now, earthly troubles and sorrows have no power to touch me. Even the knowledge that I am about to separate from my Janet cannot quench the solemn joy that fills my soul. I am so close to eternity that a few years seem to me but as one day. And when that brief, troubled day shall be at an end, I pray that my daughter and I may meet again in that heavenly rest into which all those shall enter who have guided their footsteps aright." But Janet could not be consoled. Later on in the day Sister Agnes sent for her again, and mother and daughter spent more than an hour together in sacred communion. In the dusk of evening Lady Pollexfen went again to her sick daughter's room. What passed at that last interview was known to themselves alone. Lady Pollexfen never again saw her daughter alive. Then Father Spiridion administered the last offices of his church to the dying woman. About nine o'clock the doctor drove up in his gig. But the time when he could be of service was gone by. At last mother and daughter were left alone together, and alone they remained all through the dark hours. At daybreak Father Spiridion glided into the room. The fast-sinking woman opened her eyes and smiled. "Play the _Jubilate_ for me," she whispered, "and open wide the casement." The deep voice of the organ, exultant, yearning, solemn, thrilled through the room; and on its wings, through the faint grey of the autumn morning, the soul of Sister Agnes was borne away. "Forget not that we shall meet again," were her last words. CHAPTER X. THE CONFESSION. Miss Holme, Father Spiridion, and Major Strickland were seated together in the little parlour of the latter on a certain morning a few weeks after the death of Sister Agnes. The major had been over to Dupley Walls to beg a holiday for Janet, and had brought her back with him. This was the day appointed for the opening of the box that had been left in the father's charge. Janet in her black dress looked pale and worn, but very lovely. She had been obliged in some measure to conceal the outward tokens of her grief for fear of exciting the suspicions of Lady Pollexfen, and the effort had lent a touch of sternness to her face such as it had never worn before. The wound in her heart was as deep as ever it had been, but she had learned already to control her emotions, and her demeanour this morning was marked by a gravity and self-restraint that made her seem older than her years.