the lapse of fifteen years, Mrs. Tiralla's heart
swelled with bitterness when she lay awake at night and thought of the
way she had been treated. Her mother had begged and implored her with
tears in her eyes. "We shall then be out of all our misery." And when
the girl continued to shake her head she had boxed her ears--the right
and the left indiscriminately--and had told her in a peremptory voice,
"You _shall_ marry Mr. Tiralla."

And her friend, the priest? Ah! Mrs. Tiralla once [Pg 23] more pictured
herself in that quiet room in which, with hot cheeks and enraptured
gaze, she had so often listened, on her knees, to the legends of the
saints. Once more she held the hem of the cassock between her fingers
and watered it with her tears. She had wept, had resisted: "No, I will
not marry him, I cannot!" Had not the priest always told her--nay,
positively adjured her--to remain a virgin, to remain unmarried, and in
this way secure for herself a place in heaven? She had kissed his
hands, "Help me, advise me!" Then, she did not know herself how it had
happened, then she had suddenly jumped up from her knees, confused and
trembling, and had rushed to the door and had hidden her face in a
tumult of undreamt-of feelings, which had almost stunned her with
their sudden attack. All at once she was no longer a girl, she was a
woman, who, trembling, ardent, feverish with desire, had become
self-conscious. How blissful it was to be a--_his_ chosen one. To sit
all one's life in that quiet room with the saints. In the girl's
confused dreams the figure of her Heavenly Friend seemed to mingle with
that of her earthly one. Oh, how exquisite he was, how beautiful! His
hands were like ivory, his cheeks like velvet. And his kiss----

Instead of him Mr. Tiralla had come----

Mrs. Tiralla had placed a footstool in her bedroom under her picture of
the Saviour carrying His flaming heart in His hand. The priest of her
youth had left Starawie['s] long ago--he had asked to be removed from
the neighbourhood--but she still prayed a great deal.

It was the morning after Mr. Tiralla had drunk a glass too much in his
joy at her unusual display of tenderness, and as she got out of bed her
first glance fell on the picture opposite. She crossed herself, and [Pg
24] then, gliding on her bare feet to the footstool, she knelt down and
prayed for a long time.

Mr. Tiralla had promised her faithfully, as he yesterday lay in her
arms, that he would fill up t