nsignor said nothing. He could not even now understand.

"I must thank you for your kind offices, Monsignor. I know you did
what you could. His Eminence sent for me after he had seen you.
And . . . and I must ask you to help us again . . . at Rome."

"Certainly--anything . . . . But----"

"I fear it's hopeless," went on the abbot, staring out into the
empty court, where an usher was moving quickly about from table
to table setting papers straight. "But any chance that there is
must be taken. . . . Will you write for us, Monsignor? or better
still, urge the Cardinal? There is no time to lose."

"I don't understand, my lord," said the prelate abruptly,
suddenly convinced that more had happened than he knew. "I was
only here just at the end, and . . . . what is it I can do?"

The abbot looked at him.

"That was the end," he said quietly. "Did you not hear the sentence?"

Monsignor shook his head. A kind of sickness seemed to rise from
his heart and envelop him.

"I heard nothing," he said. "I came in during Dom Adrian's
last speech."

The abbot licked his dry lips; there was a wondering sort of
apprehensiveness in his eyes.

"That was the last formality," he said. "Sentence was given
twenty minutes ago."

"And----"

The abbot bowed his head, plucking nervously at his cross.

"It has to go to Rome to be ratified," he said hurriedly. "There
will be a week or two of delay. Dom Adrian refused any release.
But . . . but he knows there is no hope."

Monsignor Masterman leaned back and drew a long breath. He
understood now. But he perceived he must give no sign. The abbot
talked on rapidly; the other caught sentences and names here and
there: he grasped that there was no real possibility of a
reversal of the judgment, but that yet every effort must be made.
But it was only with one part of his mind, and that the most
superficial, that he attended to all this. Interiorly he was
occupied wholly with facing the appalling horror that, with the
last veil dropped at last, now looked him in the eyes.

He stood up at last, promising he would see the Cardinal that
night; and then his resolve leapt to the birth.

"I should like to see Dom Adrian alone," he said quietly; "and I
had better see him at once. Can you arrange that?" The abbot
stopped at the door of the gallery.

"Yes," he said, "I think so. Will you wait here, Monsignor?"

(III)

Monsignor Masterman lifted his eyes as the door closed, and saw
the y