sts, and they get up on winter nights and go off into cold places to
pray to the Virgin Mary. The Virgin Mary is a hard mistress!"

Mrs. Bread, dwelling on these terrible facts, sat dry-eyed and pale,
with her hands clasped in her satin lap. Newman gave a melancholy
groan and fell forward, leaning his head on his hands. There was a long
silence, broken only by the ticking of the great gilded clock on the
chimney-piece.

"Where is this place--where is the convent?" Newman asked at last,
looking up.

"There are two houses," said Mrs. Bread. "I found out; I thought you
would like to know--though it's poor comfort, I think. One is in the
Avenue de Messine; they have learned that Madame de Cintre is there. The
other is in the Rue d'Enfer. That's a terrible name; I suppose you know
what it means."

Newman got up and walked away to the end of his long room. When he came
back Mrs. Bread had got up, and stood by the fire with folded hands.
"Tell me this," he said. "Can I get near her--even if I don't see her?
Can I look through a grating, or some such thing, at the place where she
is?"

It is said that all women love a lover, and Mrs. Bread's sense of the
pre-established harmony which kept servants in their "place," even
as planets in their orbits (not that Mrs. Bread had ever consciously
likened herself to a planet), barely availed to temper the maternal
melancholy with which she leaned her head on one side and gazed at
her new employer. She probably felt for the moment as if, forty years
before, she had held him also in her arms. "That wouldn't help you, sir.
It would only make her seem farther away."

"I want to go there, at all events," said Newman. "Avenue de Messine,
you say? And what is it they call themselves?"

"Carmelites," said Mrs. Bread.

"I shall remember that."

Mrs. Bread hesitated a moment, and then, "It's my duty to tell you
this, sir," she went on. "The convent has a chapel, and some people are
admitted on Sunday to the Mass. You don't see the poor creatures that
are shut up there, but I am told you can hear them sing. It's a wonder
they have any heart for singing! Some Sunday I shall make bold to go. It
seems to me I should know her voice in fifty."

Newman looked at his visitor very gratefully; then he held out his hand
and shook hers. "Thank you," he said. "If any one can get in, I will."
A moment later Mrs. Bread proposed, deferentially, to retire, but he
checked her and put a lighted candle i