on breeding
faction, faction inviting treason ... there's our story. O, God, ruling
in heaven, but not on earth, why do you torture us so? To give us such a
man, and leave us without the opportunity or the means of using him!"

He burst into violent, silent weeping. Dillon felt the stab of that
hopeless grief, which for the moment revived his own, although he could
not quite understand it. Ledwith dashed away the tears after a little
and spoke calmly.

"You see how I can yield to dreams like a foolish child. I felt for a
little as if the thing had come to pass, and gave in to the fascination.
This is the awaking. All the joy and sorrow of my life have come mostly
from dreams."

CHAPTER XIII.

ANNE DILLON'S FELICITY.

Monsignor was not discouraged by his failure to detach Arthur from the
romantic expedition to the Irish coast. With a view to save him from an
adventure so hurtful to his welfare, he went to see Anne Dillon. Her
home, no longer on Mulberry Street, but on the confines of Washington
Square, in a modest enough dwelling, enjoyed that exclusiveness which is
like the atmosphere of a great painting. One feels by instinct that the
master hand has been here. Although aware that good fortune had wrought
a marked change in Anne, Monsignor was utterly taken aback by a
transformation as remarkable in its way as the metamorphosis of Horace
Endicott.

Judy Haskell admitted him, and with a reverence showed him into the
parlor; the same Judy Haskell as of yore, ornamented with a lace cap, a
collar, deep cuffs, and an apron; through which her homeliness shone as
defiantly as the face of a rough mountain through the fog. She had been
instructed in the delicate art of receiving visitors with whom her
intimacy had formerly been marked; but for Monsignor she made an
exception, and the glint in her eye, the smile just born in the corner
of her emphatic mouth, warned him that she knew of the astonishment
which his good breeding concealed.

"We're mountin' the laddher o' glory," she said, after the usual
questions. "Luk at me in me ould age, dhressed out like a Frinch
sportin' maid. If there was a baby in the house ye'd see me, Father
Phil, galivantin' behind a baby-carriage up an' down the Square. Faith,
she does it well, the climbin', if we don't get dizzy whin we're halfway
up, an' come to earth afore all the neighbors, flatter nor pancakes."

"Tut, tut," said Monsignor, "are you not as good as the best, with t