nto the chair, absently
pulling a glove through the fingers of one hand--her bag and parasol on
the floor at her feet. One might have thought her on the point of
leaving instead of having just come. The shadows were deepening in the
corners of the room and about her half-shut eyes.

A long time she listened to the animated voices of the brothers. At last
the doors were pushed apart and they came out, Allan with his hand on
Bernal's shoulder.

"There's your bag--now hurry upstairs--the maid will show you where."

As Bernal went out, Nancy looked up at her husband with a manner
curiously quiet.

"Well, Nance--" He stepped to the door to see if Bernal was out of
hearing--"Bernal pleases me in the way he talks about the old
gentleman's estate. Either he is most reasonable, or I have never known
my true power over men."

Her face was inscrutable. Indeed, she only half heard.

"Mrs. Covil has been telling me some of your broader views on divorce."

The words shot from her lips with the crispness of an arrow, going
straight to the bull's-eye.

He glanced quickly at her, the hint of a frown drawing about his eyes.

"Mrs. Covil should have been more discreet. The authority of a priest in
these matters is a thing of delicate adjustment--the law for one may not
be the law for all. These are not matters to gossip of."

"So it seems. I was thinking of your opposite counsel to Mrs. Eversley."

"There--really, you know I read minds, at times--somehow I knew that
would be the next thing you'd speak of."

"Yes?"

"The circumstances are entirely different--I may add that--that any
intimation of inconsistency will be very unpleasing to me--very!"

"I can see that the circumstances are different--the Eversleys are not
what you would call 'important factors' in the Church--and besides--that
is a case of a wife leaving her husband."

"Nance--I'm afraid you're _not_ pleasing me--if I catch your drift. Must
I point out the difference--the spiritual difference? That misguided
woman wanted to desert her husband merely because he had hurt her
pride--her vanity--by certain alleged attentions to other women,
concerning the measure of which I had no knowledge. That was a case
where the cross must be borne for the true refining of that dross of
vanity from her soul. Her husband is of her class, and her life with him
will chasten her. While here--what have we here?"

He began to pace the floor as he was wont to do when he prepared a