Almost at the same moment Mrs. Eyrecourt’s maid disturbed her mistress over the second volume of the novel by entering the room with a letter.

“For me?” Stella asked, looking round from the window.

“No, ma’am—­for Mrs. Eyrecourt.”

The letter had been brought to the house by one of Lady Loring’s servants.  In delivering it he had apparently given private instructions to the maid.  She laid her finger significantly on her lips when she gave the letter to her mistress.

In these terms Lady Loring wrote: 

“If Stella happens to be with you, when you receive my note, don’t say anything which will let her know that I am your correspondent.  She has always, poor dear, had an inveterate distrust of Father Benwell; and, between ourselves, I am not sure that she is quite so foolish as I once thought.  The Father has unexpectedly left us—­with a well-framed excuse which satisfied Lord Loring.  It fails to satisfy Me.  Not from any wonderful exercise of penetration on my part, but in consequence of something I have just heard in course of conversation with a Catholic friend.  Father Benwell, my dear, turns out to be a Jesuit; and, what is more, a person of such high authority in the Order, that his concealment of his rank, while he was with us, must have been a matter of necessity.  He must have had some very serious motive for occupying a position so entirely beneath him as his position in our house.  I have not the shadow of a reason for associating this startling discovery with dear Stella’s painful misgivings—­and yet there is something in my mind which makes me want to hear what Stella’s mother thinks.  Come and have a talk about it as soon as you possibly can.”

Mrs. Eyrecourt put the letter in her pocket smiling quietly to herself.

Applying to Lady Loring’s letter the infallible system of solution which she had revealed to her daughter, Mrs. Eyrecourt solved the mystery of the priest’s conduct without a moment’s hesitation.  Lord Loring’s check, in Father Benwell’s pocket, representing such a liberal subscription that my lord was reluctant to mention it to my lady—­there was the reading of the riddle, as plain as the sun at noonday!  Would it be desirable to enlighten Lady Loring as she had already enlightened Stella?  Mrs. Eyrecourt decided in the negative.  As Roman Catholics, and as old friends of Romayne, the Lorings naturally rejoiced in his conversion.  But as old friends also of Romayne’s wife, they were bound not to express their sentiments too openly.  Feeling that any discussion of the priest’s motives would probably lead to the delicate subject of the conversion, Mrs. Eyrecourt prudently determined to let the matter drop.  As a consequence of this decision, Stella was left without the slightest warning of the catastrophe which was now close at hand.

Mrs. Eyrecourt joined her daughter at the window.

“Well, my dear, is it clearing up?  Shall we take a drive before luncheon?”