merely what gardeners call "flowering
shoots," but steady growths giving promise of sound wood.

Mark's sermons were becoming more and more the rage, and people were
heard to say that he was the only Catholic preacher in London, excepting
perhaps one or two Jesuit Fathers; while he had also the tribute of
attention from the press, which he particularly disliked.

Meanwhile, the old rector was still gruff and still proffered snubs
which were gratefully received, for Mark was genuinely anxious not to be
misled by the atmosphere of praise and affection in which he was living.

Nothing warned him of impending danger (to use a phrase of old-fashioned
romance) when he was told that Miss Dexter was asking to see him. He had
not seen her for a long time, and was quite glad that she should come.

He looked young, eager, and happy as he came quickly into the parlour,
but after a few minutes the simple warmth of his manner changed into a
more negative politeness. There was something so gorgeous in Molly's
appearance, and so very strange in her face, that even a man who had
seen less of the world than is obtained in a year on the mission in
London, could not fail to be somewhat puzzled.

Molly hardly spoke for some moments, and silence was apparently
inevitable. Then she burst out, without preparation, in a wild,
incoherent way, with her whole life's story. The story of a child
deserted by her mother, neglected by her father, taken from the ayah who
was the only person who had ever loved her, and sent like a parcel to
the care of a hard and selfish aunt who was ashamed of her. It might
have been horribly pathetic only that it was impossible that so much
egotism and bitterness should not choke the sympathy of the listener.
But as the story came to Molly's twenty-first year, the strange, bitter
self-defence (she had not yet explained why she should defend herself at
all to Father Molyneux), all the unpleasing moral side of the story
became merged in the sense of its dramatic qualities.

Molly had never told it to anyone before now, and, indeed, she had not
realised several features of the case until quite lately. She told well
the disillusion as to her mother, her own single-handed fight with life,
the double sense of shame as to her mother's past, and her own ambiguous
position. She told him how she felt at first meeting Rose Bright, of her
own sense of sailing under false colours, and she actually explained, in
her strange ple