They gave their money willingly enough for the adornment of their chapel, for stained glass, incense, candles, and for music, and were it not for the services of the Church he didn’t know into what barbarism the people mightn’t have fallen:  the tones of the organ sustaining clear voices of nuns singing a Mass by Mozart must sooner or later inspire belief in the friendliness of pure air and the beauty of flowers.  Flowers are the only beautiful things within the reach of these poor people.  Roses all may have, and it was pleasant to think that there is nothing more entirely natural or charming in the life of man than his love of flowers:  it preceded his love of music; no doubt an appreciation of something better in the way of art than a jig played on the pipes would follow close on the purification of the home.

Nora Glynn was beautiful, and her personality was winning and charming, her playing delightful, and her singing might have inspired the people to cultivate beauty.  But she was going to the convent.  The convent had gotten her.  It was a pity.  Mrs. O’Mara’s scandalous stories, insinuating lies, had angered him till he could bear with her no longer, and he had put her out the door.  He didn’t believe that Eliza had ever said she could give Nora more than she was earning in Garranard.  It mattered very little if she had, for it had so fallen out that she was going to get her.  He begrudged them Nora.  But Eliza was going to get her, and he’d have to make the best terms he could.

But he could not constrain his thoughts to the present moment.  They would go back to the fateful afternoon when he ran across the fields to ask Nora if what Mrs. O’Mara had said of her were true.  If he had only waited!  If she had come to him to confession on Saturday, as he expected she would!  If something had prevented him from preaching on Sunday!  A bad cold might have prevented him from speaking, and she might have gone away for a while, and, when her baby was born, she might have come back.  It could have been easily arranged.  But fate had ordered her life otherwise, and here he was in the Tinnick Convent, hoping to make her some poor amends for the wrong he had done her.  Would Eliza help him?—­that was the question he asked himself as he crossed the beeswaxed floor and stood looking at the late afternoon sunlight glancing through the trees, falling across the green sward.

‘How do you do, Oliver?’

His face lighted up, but it changed expression and became gray again.  He had expected to see Eliza, tall and thin, with yellow eyebrows and pale eyes.  Hers was a good, clearly-cut face, like his own, whereas Mary’s was quite different.  Yet a family likeness stared through Mary’s heavy white face.  Her eyes were smaller than his, and she already began to raise them and lower them, and to look at him askance, in just the way he hated.  Somehow or other she always contrived to make him feel uncomfortable, and the present occasion was no exception.  She was already reproving him, hoping he was not disappointed at seeing her, and he had to explain that he expected to see Eliza, and that was why he looked surprised.  She must not confuse surprise with disappointment.  He was very glad to see her.