His resolve did not alter; he longed for health because it would bring the realisation of his desire, and time appeared to him cruelly long.  Nor could he think of the pain he inflicted on his mother, so centred was he in this thought; he was blind to her sorrowing face, he was deaf to her entreaty; he could neither feel nor see beyond the immediate object he had in mind, and he spoke to her in despair of the length of months that separated him from consecration; he speculated on the possibility of expediting that happy day by a dispensation from the Pope.  The moment he could obtain permission from the doctor he ordered his trunks to be packed, and when he bid Mrs Norton and Kitty Hare good-bye, he exacted a promise from the former to be present at Stanton College on Palm Sunday.  He wished her to be present when he embraced Holy Orders.

CHAPTER IV.

Every morning Mrs Norton flung her black shawl over her shoulders, rattled her keys, and scolded the servants at the end of the long passage.  Kitty, as she watered the flowers in the greenhouse, often wondered why John had chosen to become a priest and grieve his mother.  Three times out of five when the women met at lunch, Mrs Norton said: 

“Kitty, would you like to come out for a drive?”

Kitty answered, “I don’t mind; just as you like, Mrs Norton.”

After tea at five Kitty read for an hour, and in the evening she played the piano; and she sometimes endeavoured to console her hostess by suggesting that people did change their minds, and that John might not become a priest after all.  Mrs Norton looked at the girl, and it was often on her lips to say, “If you had only flirted, if you had only paid him some attentions, all might have been different.”  But heart-broken though she was, Mrs Norton could not speak the words.  The girl looked so candid, so flowerlike in her guilelessness, that the thought seemed a pollution.  And in a few days Mr Hare sent for Kitty; and with her departed the last ray of sunlight, and Thornby Place grew too sad and solitary for Mrs Norton.

She went to visit some friends; she spent Christmas at the Rectory; and in the long evenings when Kitty had gone to bed, she opened her heart to her old friend.  The last hope was gone; there was nothing for her to look for now.  John did not even write to her; she had not heard from him since he left.  It was very wrong of the Jesuits to encourage him in such conduct, and she thought of laying the whole matter before the Pope.  The order had once been suppressed; she did not remember by what Pope; but a Pope had grown tired of their intrigues, and had suppressed the order.  She made these accusations in moments of passion, and immediately after came deep regret....  How wrong of her to speak ill of her religion, and to a Protestant!  If John did become a priest it would be a punishment for her sins.  But what was she saying?  If John became a priest, she