r said she
could give Nora more than she was earning in Garranard. It mattered very
little if she had, for it had so fallen out that she was going to get
her. He begrudged them Nora. But Eliza was going to get her, and he'd
have to make the best terms he could.

But he could not constrain his thoughts to the present moment. They
would go back to the fateful afternoon when he ran across the fields to
ask Nora if what Mrs. O'Mara had said of her were true. If he had only
waited! If she had come to him to confession on Saturday, as he expected
she would! If something had prevented him from preaching on Sunday! A
bad cold might have prevented him from speaking, and she might have gone
away for a while, and, when her baby was born, she might have come back.
It could have been easily arranged. But fate had ordered her life
otherwise, and here he was in the Tinnick Convent, hoping to make her
some poor amends for the wrong he had done her. Would Eliza help
him?--that was the question he asked himself as he crossed the
beeswaxed floor and stood looking at the late afternoon sunlight
glancing through the trees, falling across the green sward.

'How do you do, Oliver?'

His face lighted up, but it changed expression and became gray again. He
had expected to see Eliza, tall and thin, with yellow eyebrows and pale
eyes. Hers was a good, clearly-cut face, like his own, whereas Mary's
was quite different. Yet a family likeness stared through Mary's heavy
white face. Her eyes were smaller than his, and she already began to
raise them and lower them, and to look at him askance, in just the way
he hated. Somehow or other she always contrived to make him feel
uncomfortable, and the present occasion was no exception. She was
already reproving him, hoping he was not disappointed at seeing her, and
he had to explain that he expected to see Eliza, and that was why he
looked surprised. She must not confuse surprise with disappointment. He
was very glad to see her.

'I know I am not as interesting as Eliza,' she began, 'but I thought you
might like to see me, and if I hadn't come at once I shouldn't have had
an opportunity of seeing you alone.'

'She has something to confide,' Father Oliver said to himself, and he
hoped that her confidences might be cut short by the timely arrival of
Eliza.

'Eliza is engaged at present. She told Sister Agatha to tell you that
she would be with you presently. I met Sister Agatha in the passage, and
sai