see
him for a few minutes, and if he would come at once she would consider
it a great favour. If it were possible for him to come down that very
afternoon she would be deeply grateful. She wished to consult him, and
on a matter on which she felt very deeply, and nothing, she said, but a
priest's advice could allay her scruples.

The nurse gave her a sheet of paper and a pencil, and she scribbled a
letter as best she could in her bed, and lay back fatigued. The nurse
said she must not fret, that Father Brennan would be sure to come to
her at once if he were at home, and Ellen knew that that was so; and
she felt that she was peevish, but she felt that Ned ought not to have
written her that letter.

The hours that afternoon were very long and she restless and weary of
them, and she asked the nurse many times to go to the window to see if
Father Brennan were coming. At last he came, and she told him of the
letter she had received, not wishing to show him the letter, for it was
somewhat extravagant, and she did not like a priest to read Ned's
praise of her body. She was anxious, however, to give him a true
account of the letter, and she would have talked a long while if the
priest had not stopped her, saying the matter was one for the doctor to
decide. The Church had never expressed any views on the subject:
whether a mother was justified in nursing her child or in passing it
over to a foster-mother. It was entirely a question for the doctor, and
if the doctor advised such a course she would be wrong not to follow
it. Ellen felt that she had been misunderstood, and she tried to tell
the priest that Ned's letter had been inspired by his admiration of
her, and that this seemed to her selfish. She wondered how a father
could consider his wife before the child, but when she said this she
did not feel she was speaking quite sincerely, and this troubled her;
she was on the verge of tears, and the nurse came in and said she had
spoken enough that afternoon, and the priest bade her good-by. The
doctor came in soon after; there was some whispering, and Ellen knew
that the woman he had brought with him was the foster-mother, and the
baby was taken from her, and she saw it fix its gluttonous little lips
on the foster-mother's breast.

Now that the priest had ordered her conscience, she got well rapidly,
and it was a pleasure to her to prepare herself for her husband's
admiration. The nurse thought he would perceive no difference in