enture and irresponsibility. It is hard to say what he might have
done or left undone; but, as Sophie's face was within an inch of his
own, the door of the room suddenly opened, and Christine appeared. The
indignation that had sent her back from mass to Ferrol was turned into
another indignation now.

Sophie, frightened, turned round and met her infuriated look. She did
not move, however.

"Leave this room at once. What do you want here?" Christine said,
between gasps of anger.

"The room is as much mine as yours," answered Sophie, sullenly.

"The man isn't," retorted Christine, with a vicious snap of her teeth.

"Come, come," said Ferrol, in a soothing tone, rising from the sofa and
advancing.

"What's he to you?" said Sophie, scornfully.

"My husband: that's all!" answered Christine. "And now, if you please,
will you go to yours? You'll find him at mass. He'll have plenty of
praying to do if he prays for you both--voila!"

"Your husband!" said Sophie, in a husky voice, dumfounded and miserable.
"Is that so?" she added to Ferrol. "Is she-your wife?"

"That's the case," he answered, "and, of course," he added in a
mollifying tone, "being my sister as well as Christine's, there's no
reason why you shouldn't be alone with me in the room a few moments. Is
there now?" he added to Christine.

The acting was clever enough, but not quite convincing, and Christine
was too excited to respond to his blarney.

"He can't be your real husband," said Sophie, hardly above a whisper.
"The Cure didn't marry you, did he?" She looked at Ferrol doubtfully.

"Well, no," he said; "we were married over in Upper Canada."

"By a Protestant?" asked Sophie.

Christine interrrupted. "What's that to you? I hope I'll never see your
face again while I live. I want to be alone with my husband, and
your husband wants to be alone with his wife: won't you oblige us and
him--Hein?"

Sophie gave Ferrol a look which haunted him while he lived. One idle
afternoon he had sowed the seeds of a little storm in the heart of a
woman, and a whirlwind was driving through her life to parch and make
desolate the green fields of her youth and womanhood. He had loitered
and dallied without motive; but the idle and unmeaning sinner is the
most dangerous to others and to himself, and he realised it at that
moment, so far as it was in him to realise anything of the kind.

Sophie's figure as it left the room had that drooping, beaten look which
only come