“There is no necessity that either Mr. or Mrs. Brimmer should be disobeyed in their wishes,” said Hurlstone grimly.  “Luckily there are two boats; Mrs. Brimmer and Miss Chubb can take one of them with half the escort, and proceed at once to the Excelsior.  I will ride with them as far as the boat.  And now,” he continued, turning to the old priest, with sparkling eyes, “I have only to ask your blessing, and the good wishes of these ladies, to go forth on my mission of peace.  If I am successful,” he added, with a light laugh, “confess that a layman and a heretic may do some service for the Church.”  As the old man laid his half detaining, half benedictory hands upon his shoulders, the young man seized the opportunity to whisper in his ear, “Remember your promise to tell her all I have told you,” and, with an other glance at Miss Keene, he marshalled Mrs. Brimmer and Miss Chubb before him, and hurried them to the boat.

Miss Keene looked after him with a vague felicity in the change that seemed to have come on him, a change that she could as little account for as her own happiness.  Was it the excitement of danger that had overcome his reserve, and set free his compressed will and energy?  She longed for her brother to see him thus—­alert, strong, and chivalrous.  In her girlish faith, she had no fear for his safety; he would conquer, he would succeed; he would come back to them victorious!  Looking up from her happy abstraction, at the side of Mrs. Markham, who had calmly gone to sleep in an arm-chair, she saw Father Esteban’s eyes fixed upon her.  With a warning gesture of the hand towards Mrs. Markham, he rose, and, going to the door of the sacristy, beckoned to her.  The young girl noiselessly crossed the room and followed him into the sanctuary.

Half an hour later, and while Mrs. Markham was still asleep, Father Esteban appeared at the door of the sacristy ostentatiously taking snuff, and using a large red handkerchief to wipe his more than usually humid eyes.  Eleanor Keene, with her chin resting on her hand, remained sitting as he had left her, with her abstracted eyes fixed vacantly on the lamp before the statue of the Virgin and the half-lit gloom of the nave.

Padre Esteban had told her all!  She now knew Hurlstone’s history even as he had hesitatingly imparted it to the old priest in this very church—­perhaps upon the very seat where she sat.  She knew the peace that he had sought for and found within these walls, broken only by his passion for her!  She knew his struggles against the hopelessness of this new-born love, even the desperate remedy that had been adopted against herself, and the later voluntary exile of her lover.  She knew the providential culmination of his trouble in the news brought unconsciously by Perkins, which, but a few hours ago, he had verified by the letters, records, and even the certificate of death that had thus strangely been placed in his hands!  She knew all this so clearly now, that, with the instinct