ng, was the absolute meaning of the words as the
Bishop had spoken them.

Some day it might happen that Carol would be confronted with the man
whom she believed to be her father. What if she were to bring Vane face
to face with him and he knew him for what he was, what would he do, not
as man, but as priest--forgive or retain, absolve or damn?

When the ordination service was over and the congregation was moving out
of the Cathedral, Sir Arthur caught sight of Dora for the first time.
They were only a few feet apart, and recognition was inevitable. She
looked at him as though she had never seen him before, although she had
been present at more than one interview between him and Carol at
Melville Gardens, but Sir Arthur at once edged his way towards her,
shook hands in that decorous fashion which is usual among departing
congregations, and said, in an equally decorous whisper:

"Good morning, Miss Murray! I hope you have not come here by accident,
and that you will be able to give me some news of Carol. We have looked
for you everywhere."

"Except perhaps in the right place," she murmured, putting her hand into
his, "and if you had found us I don't think it would have been of any
use. Carol's mind was quite made up. My address is 15, Stonebridge
Street, if you wish to write to me. Good morning."

And then they parted, he to go his way and she to go hers, and each with
an infinite pity for the other, and yet with what different reasons? It
was only a chance meeting, the accidental crossing of two widely
diverging life-paths; only one of those instances in which romance
delights to mock the commonplace, and yet how much it meant--and how
much might it mean when the future had become the present.

Fortunately, Garthorne and Enid had been pressing on in front, and so he
had not noticed the meeting between Sir Arthur and Dora, whereby the
second possible catastrophe of the day was averted.

Sir Arthur was one of the house-party at the Abbey, for he and Sir
Reginald had been to a certain extent colleagues in India, and had kept
up their acquaintance, and now that Sir Reginald's son had married the
girl whom Sir Arthur had always looked upon as a prospective
daughter-in-law, the intimacy had become somewhat closer. Sir Arthur had
said frankly at the first that he thought Vane had done an exceedingly
foolish thing; but since he had done it and meant to stick to it, there
was an end of the matter, and if Vane couldn't or w