the Venerable Gambell is a bachelor?"

"Hilda, you shall not! We all love him--you shall not lead him astray!"

"You would not think of--the altar?"

Miss Livingstone's pale small smile fell like a snowflake upon Hilda's
mood, and was swallowed up. "You are very preposterous," she said. "Go
on. You always amuse one." Then, as if Hilda's going on were precisely
the thing she could not quite endure, she said quickly, "The Coromandel
is telegraphed from Colombo to-day."

"Ah!" said Hilda.

"He leaves for Madras to-morrow. The thing is to take place there, you
know."

"Then nothing but shipwreck can save him."

"Nothing but--what a horrible idea! Don't you think they may be happy? I
really think they may."

"There is not one of the elements that give people, when they commit
the paramount stupidity of marrying, reason to hope that they may not be
miserable. Not one. If he were a strong man I should pity him less.
But he's not. He's immensely dependent on his tastes, his friends, his
circumstances."

Alicia looked at Hilda; her glance betrayed an attention caught upon
an accidental phrase. "The paramount stupidity." She did not repeat it
aloud, she turned it over in her mind.

"You are thinking," Hilda said accusingly. "What are you thinking
about?"

"Oh, nothing. I saw Stephen yesterday. I thought him looking rather
wretched."

A shadow of grave consideration winged itself across Hilda's eyes.

"He works so much too hard," she said. "It is an appalling waste. But he
will offer himself up."

Alicia looked unsatisfied. She had hoped for something that would throw
more light upon the paramount stupidity. "He brought Mr. Lappe to tea,"
she said.

The shadow went. "Should you think Brother Lappe," Miss Howe demanded,
"specially fitted for the cure of souls? Never, never, could I allow the
process of my regeneration to come through Brother Lappe. He has such a
little nose, and such wide pink cheeks, and such fat sloping shoulders.
Dear succulent Brother Lappe!"

A Sister passed through the dormitory on a visit of inspection. Alicia
bowed sweetly, and the Sister inclined herself briefly with a cloistered
smile. As she disappeared Hilda threw a black skirt over her head,
making a veil of it flowing backward, and rendered the visit, the
noiseless measured step, the little deprecating movements of inquiry,
the benevolent recognition of a visitor from a world where people
carried parasols and wore spotted muslins