A few days after he caught sight of her handwriting on his breakfast-table, and he sat reading the letter, to Catherine’s annoyance, who said the rashers were getting cold.

From Miss Nora Glynn to Father Oliver Gogarty.

’BEECHWOOD HALL, BERKSHIRE,

’July 20, 19—.

’DEAR FATHER GOGARTY,

’One is not always in a mood to give credit to others for good intentions, especially when one returns home at the close of day disappointed, and I wrote a hard, perhaps a cruel, letter; but I’m feeling differently now.  The truth is that your letter arrived at an unfortunate moment when things were going badly with me.’

‘I’m forgiven,’ Father Oliver cried—­’I’m forgiven;’ and his joy was so great that the rest of the letter seemed unnecessary, but he continued to read: 

’Father O’Grady has no doubt told you that I have given up my post of organist in his church, Mr. Poole having engaged me to teach his daughter music and to act as his secretary.  In a little letter which I received about a fortnight ago from him he told me he had written to you, and it appears that you have recovered from your scruples of conscience, and have forgotten the wrong you did me; but if I know you at all, you are deceiving yourself.  You will never forget the wrong you did me.  But I shall forget.  I am not sure that it has not already passed out of my mind.  This will seem contradictory, for didn’t I say that I couldn’t forget your cruelty in my first letter?  I wonder if I meant it when I wrote, “Put the whole thing and me out of your mind....”  I suppose I did at the time, and yet I doubt it.  Does anyone want to be forgotten utterly?

’I should have written to you before, but we have been busy.  Mr. Poole’s book has been promised by the end of the year.  It’s all in type, but he is never satisfied.  To-day he has gone to London to seek information about the altars of the early Israelites.  It’s a wonderful book, but I cannot write about it to-day; the sun is shining, the country is looking lovely, and my pupil is begging me to finish my letter and go out with her.

’Very sincerely yours,

‘NORA GLYNN.’

‘So forgiveness has come at last,’ he said; and as he walked along the shore he fell to thinking that very soon all her life in Garranard would be forgotten.  ‘She seems interested in her work,’ he muttered; and his mind wandered over the past, trying to arrive at a conclusion, if there was or was not a fundamental seriousness in her character, inclining on the whole to think there was, for if she was not serious fundamentally, she would not have been chosen by Mr. Poole for his secretary.  ’My little schoolmistress, the secretary of a great scholar!  How very extraordinary!  But why is it extraordinary?  When will she write again?’ And every night he wished for the dawn, and every morning he asked if there were any letters for him.  ’No, your reverence, no letters this morning;’ and when Catherine handed him some envelopes they only contained bills or uninteresting letters from the parishioners or letters from the Board of Works about the bridge in which he could no longer feel any interest whatever.