They both laughed.  Father Benwell went back to his newspaper.  Winterfield broke the seal of the envelope and took out the inclosures.

The confession was the first of the papers at which he happened to look.  At the opening lines he turned pale.  He read more, and his eyes filled with tears.  In low broken tones he said to the priest, “You have innocently brought me most distressing news.  I entreat your pardon if I ask to be left alone.”

Father Benwell said a few well-chosen words of sympathy, and immediately withdrew.  The dog licked his master’s hand, hanging listlessly over the arm of the chair.

Later in the evening, a note from Winterfield was left by messenger at the priest’s lodgings.  The writer announced, with renewed expressions of regret, that he would be again absent from London on the next day, but that he hoped to return to the hotel and receive his guest on the evening of the day after.

Father Benwell rightly conjectured that Winterfield’s destination was the town in which his wife had died.

His object in taking the journey was not, as the priest supposed, to address inquiries to the rector and the landlady, who had been present at the fatal illness and the death—­but to justify his wife’s last expression of belief in the mercy and compassion of the man whom she had injured.  On that “nameless grave,” so sadly and so humbly referred to in the confession, he had resolved to place a simple stone cross, giving to her memory the name which she had shrunk from profaning in her lifetime.  When he had written the brief inscription which recorded the death of “Emma, wife of Bernard Winterfield,” and when he had knelt for a while by the low turf mound, his errand had come to its end.  He thanked the good rector; he left gifts with the landlady and her children, by which he was gratefully remembered for many a year afterward; and then, with a heart relieved, he went back to London.

Other men might have made their sad little pilgrimage alone.  Winterfield took his dog with him.  “I must have something to love,” he said to the rector, “at such a time as this.”

CHAPTER IV.

FATHER BENWELL’S CORRESPONDENCE.

To the Secretary, S. J., Rome.

WHEN I wrote last, I hardly thought I should trouble you again so soon.  The necessity has, however, arisen.  I must ask for instructions, from our Most Reverend General, on the subject of Arthur Penrose.

I believe that I informed you that I decided to defer my next visit to Ten Acres Lodge for two or three days, in order that Winterfield (if he intended to do so) might have time to communicate with Mrs. Romayne, after his return from the country.  Naturally enough, perhaps, considering the delicacy of the subject, he has not taken me into his confidence.  I can only guess that he has maintained the same reserve with Mrs. Romayne.