with reverence, moving about as if in a temple.
He found, however, that she had made it a stage for a continuous drama,
in which she played the leading part, and the Dillon clan with all its
ramifications played minor characters and the audience. Her motives and
her methods he could not fathom and did not try; the house filled
rapidly, that was enough; the round of dinners, suppers, receptions,
dances, and whatnots had the regularity of the tides. Everybody came
down from Judy's remotest cousin up to His Grace the archbishop. Even
Edith Conyngham, apparently too timid to leave the shadow of Sister
Magdalen, stole into a back room with Judy, and haunted the beach for a
few days. For Judy's sake he turned aside to entertain her, and with the
perversity which seems to follow certain actions he told her the
pathetic incident of the dancer. Why he should have chosen this poor nun
to hear this tale, embellished as if to torture her, he could never make
out. Often in after years, when events had given the story
significance, he sought for his own motives in vain. It might have been
the gray hair, the rusty dress, the depressed manner, so painful a
contrast to the sea-green sprite, all youth, and grace, and beauty,
which provoked him.

"I shall pray for the poor thing," said rusty Edith, fingering her
beads, and then she made to grasp his hand, which he thrust into his
pockets.

"Not a second time," he told Louis. "I'd rather get the claw of a boiled
lobster."

The young men did not like Miss Conyngham, but Louis pitied her sad
state.

The leading characters on Anne's stage, at least the persons whom she
permitted occasionally to fill its center, were the anxious lovers Mona
and Doyle Grahame. He was a poet to his finger-tips, dark-haired, ruddy,
manly, with clear wit, and the tenderest and bravest of dark eyes; and
she, red-tressed, lovely, candid, simple, loved him with her whole heart
while submitting to the decree of a sour father who forbade the banns.
Friends like Anne gave them the opportunity to woo, and the Dillon clan
stood as one to blind the father as to what was going on. The sight of
this beauty and faith and love feeding on mutual confidence beside the
sunlit surf and the moonlight waters gave Arthur profound sadness,
steeped his heart in bitterness. Such scenes had been the prelude to his
tragedy. Despair looked out of his eyes and frightened Louis.

"Why should you mind it so, after a year?" the lad plea