and talk, and at others thou art
close shut up like a coffer."

"Because that is how I feel."

"I wish thou wouldst tell thy feelings to Father Bruno."

"I shall wait till he asks me, I think," said Belasez a little drily.

"Well, I am sure he will."

"I am not sure that he will--twice."

"Why, what wouldst thou say to him?"

"He will hear if he wants to know."

And Belasez thereupon "shut up like a coffer," and seemed to have lost
her tongue for the remainder of the night.

Doucebelle determined that, if she could possibly contrive it, without
wounding the feelings of Father Nicholas, her next confession should be
made to Father Bruno. He seemed to her to be a man made of altogether
different metal from his colleagues. Master Aristoteles kept himself
entirely to physical ailments, and never heard a confession, except from
the sick in emergency. Father Nicholas was a very easy confessor, for
his thoughts were usually in his beloved study, and whatever the
confession might be, absolution seemed to follow as a matter of course.
If his advice were asked on any point outside philology in all its
divisions, he generally appeared to be rather taken by surprise, and
almost as much puzzled as his penitent. His strongest reproof was--

"Ah, that was wrong, my child. Thou must not do that again."

So that confession to Father Nicholas, while eminently comfortable to a
dead soul, was anything but satisfying to a living one.

Father Warner was a terrible confessor. His minute questions penetrated
into every corner of soul and body. He took nothing for granted, good
nor bad. Absolution was hard to get from him, and not to be had on any
terms but those of severe penance. And yet it seemed to Doucebelle that
there was an inner sanctuary of her heart from which he never even tried
to lift the veil, a depth in her nature which he never approached. Was
it because there was no such depth in his, and therefore he necessarily
ignored its existence in another?

In one way or another, they were all miserable comforters. She wished
to try Father Bruno.

Most unwittingly, Father Nicholas helped her to gain her end by
requesting a holiday. He had heard a rumour that a Latin manuscript had
been discovered in the library of Saint Albans' Abbey, and Father
Nicholas, in whose eyes the lost books of Livy were of more consequence
than any thing else in the world except the Order of Saint Benedict, was
unhappy till he had