rather marry Miss Bangs without the
dollars. Then it is all very well for Scremerston to yield to Venus
Verticordia, and transfer his heart to this new enchantress. But, if I
am not mistaken, the Earl himself is much more kind than kin. The heart
has no age, and he is a very well-preserved peer. You might take him for
little more than forty, though he quite looked his years when I saw him
first. Well, _I_ am safe enough, in spite of Merton's warning: this new
Helen has no eyes for me, and the Prince has no eyes for her, I think.
But who is the Jesuit?'

Logan fought with his memory till he fell asleep, but he recovered no
gleam of recollection about the holy man.

It did not seem to Logan, next day, that he was in for a very lively
holiday. His host carried off Miss Willoughby to the muniment-room after
breakfast; that was an advantage he had over Scremerston, who was
decidedly restless and ill at ease. He took Logan to see the keeper, and
they talked about fish and examined local flies, and Logan arranged to go
and try the trout with the bustard some night; and then they pottered
about, and ate cherries in the garden, and finally the Earl found them
half asleep in the smoking-room. He routed the Jesuit out of the
library, where he was absorbed in a folio containing the works of the
sainted Father Parsons, and then the Earl showed Logan and Father
Riccoboni over the house. From a window of the gallery Scremerston could
be descried playing croquet with Miss Willoughby, an apparition radiant
in white.

The house was chiefly remarkable for queer passages, which, beginning
from the roof of the old tower, above the Father's chamber, radiated
about, emerging in unexpected places. The priests' holes had offered to
the persecuted clergy of old times the choice between being grilled erect
behind a chimney, or of lying flat in a chamber about the size of a
coffin near the roof, where the martyr Jesuits lived on suction, like the
snipe, absorbing soup from a long straw passed through a wall into a
neighbouring garret.

'Those were cruel times,' said Father Riccoboni, who presently, at
luncheon, showed that he could thoroughly appreciate the tender mercies
of the present or Christian era. Logan watched him, and once when,
something that interested him being said, the Father swept the table with
his glance without raising his head, a memory for a fraction of a moment
seemed to float towards the surface of Logan's cons