erhaps, not
unrepented sin of which she alone, save Sir Reginald, in all that great
congregation knew. How could this man kneel there and say these solemn
words, before he had confessed his sin to the man he had wronged, to the
husband from whom he had stolen a wife, to the son he had deprived of a
mother? What horrible mockery and blasphemy it all was! Surely some day
some terrible retribution must fall on him for this.

After the Eucharist followed, as usual on such occasions, the Ordination
Service. She had never seen Vane before, but when some of the
congregation had left after the Communion Service, she left her seat and
took a vacant one in front of the chancel, and then, even at some
distance, she recognised him immediately by his likeness to Carol. It
seemed to her that she had never seen anything so beautiful in human
shape when he rose in his surplice and stole and hood to take his place
before the Bishop at the altar-rail. And yet how different must her
thoughts have been from Enid's, as they both looked upon the kneeling
figure and listened to the words which were the actual fulfilment of the
vow that he had taken to take up his cross and follow Him who said:
"Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot
be my disciple."

Then, in due course, came the fateful words, more full of fate, so far
as they concerned Vane, than any who knew him in the congregation had
any idea of.

"Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a priest in the
Church of God, now committed unto thee by the Imposition of our hands
from God. Whose sins thou dost forgive they are forgiven, and whose sins
thou dost retain they are retained. And be thou a faithful dispenser of
the word of God and of his Holy Sacraments; in the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen!"

"Whose sins thou dost forgive they are forgiven, and whose sins thou
dost retain, they are retained!"

Saving only Vane himself, these words had a deeper meaning for Dora, the
Magdalen, the sinner, and the outcast, than they had for anyone else in
the congregation, and in one sense they meant even more to her than they
could do to him. When he rose from his knees before the altar rails, he
would rise invested, as she believed, by the authority of God through
the Church, with a power infinitely greater than that of any earthly
judge. It was his to forgive or retain, his to pardon or to damn. That,
to her simple reasoni