go
away and never tell you."

"Why not? You came here for no other reason."

Father Adrian shook his head. "I did not come to tell you. It was
your home I came to see. Many hundreds of years ago Vaux Abbey was a
monastery, sacred to the saint whose name I unworthily bear. My visit
here was half a pilgrimage! But," he went on, his brows contracting,
and his eyes gleaming fire, "since I came, I have been perilously near
striking the blow which I have power to strike. You bear a name which
for centuries was foremost in the history of our sacred Church. For
generation after generation the De Vauxs were good Catholics and the
benefactors of their Church. Your chapel was richly adorned, and five
priests dwelt here always with old Sir Roland de Vaux. And now, where
is your chapel, once the most beautiful in England; it is a pile of
ruins, like your faith! I wander round in your villages. Your tenants
have gone the way of their lord. Roman Catholicism is a dying power.
Hideous chapels have sprung up in all your districts! The true faith
is neglected! And who is to blame for it all? Your recreant family.
You, who should have been the most zealous upholders of religion, have
drifted down the stream of fashion, nerveless and indifferent. Oh! it
is heresy, rank heresy, to think of a De Vaux, such as you, dwelling
indifferent amongst the mighty associations of your name and home! I
wander about amongst those magnificent ruins of yours, aesthetically
beautiful, but nevertheless a living, burning reproach, and I ask
myself whether I do well in holding my peace. I cannot tell! I cannot
tell!"

Paul was moved in spite of himself by the vehemence of his companion's
words. The horrors of that deathbed scene at Cruta had never grown dim
to him. He had always felt that his father had only decided to
keep something back from him in those last moments, after a bitter
struggle; and he was now quite sure that whatever it might have been,
the secret had been confided to this priest.

"I want to ask you a question," he said. "Whatever this mystery may be
to which you are constantly alluding, I am of course ignorant. But you
seem to have some understanding with the two women whom we have left
this evening. I want to know whether Adrea is concerned in it."

"She is not!"

"Nor Madame de Merteuill?"

"I cannot tell you!"

They were in the Abbey grounds, close to the ruins, and the moorland
lay behind them, with its floating mists and vagu