emely disquieting effect. Passing from the Chapel-Room and the
society of her late companions--all three persons of distinct
individuality, all three possessing, though from very differing
standpoints, a definitely masculine outlook on life--into this silent
bedchamber, she seemed to pass with startling abruptness from the
active to the passive, from the objective to the subjective side of
things, from the world that creates to that which obeys, merely, and
waits. The present and masculine, with its clear practical reason, its
vigorous purposes, was exchanged for a place peopled by memories only,
dedicated wholly to submissive and patient endurance. And this fell in
extremely ill with Honoria's present humour, while the somewhat
unseemly antics of the small, scriptural personages, pictured upon the
chimney-space and hearth, troubled her imagination, in that they added
a point of irony to this apparent triumph of the remote over the
immediate, of tradition over fact.

Nor as, stung with unspoken remonstrance, she approached Lady Calmady
was this sense of intrusion into an alien region lessened, or her
appreciation of the difficulties of the mission she had been deputed by
doctor, priest, and amiable young fine gentleman--her late
companions--to fulfil, by any means lightened.

For Katherine lay back in the great rose-silk and muslin-covered
armchair, at right angles to the fireplace, motionless, not a
participant merely, so it seemed to the intruder, in that all-embracing
quiet, but the very source and centre of it, its nucleus and heart. The
lines of her figure were shrouded in a loose, wadded gown of
dove-coloured silk, bordered with swan's-down. A coif of rare, white
lace covered her upturned hair. Her eyes were closed, the rim of the
eye-socket being very evident. While her face, though smooth and still
graciously young, was so attenuated as to appear almost transparent.
Now, as often before, it struck Honoria that a very exquisite spiritual
quality was present in her aspect--her whole bearing and expression
betraying, less the languor and defeat of physical illness, than the
exhaustion of long sustained moral effort, followed by the calm of
entire self-dedication and renunciation of will.

On the table at her elbow were a bowl of fresh-picked violets and
greenhouse-grown tea-roses, some books of the hour, both English and
French, a miniature of Dickie at the age of thirteen--the proud, little
head and its cap of