yer in the sewing-circle, and that
her husband's Catholicism was a source of deep anxiety, not to say
proselyting hostility, on the part of the pastor and his wife, while
from another of these officious souls she learned that the Springs,
beautiful as it was, so sunlit, so pure of air, was a centre of marital
infelicity, wherein the devil reigned supreme.

Her mother's pastor called, and was very outspoken as to Mart and
Charles--both of whom needed the Lord's grace badly. He expressed great
concern for Bertha's spiritual welfare, and openly prayed for her
husband, whose nominal submission to the Catholic Church seemed not
merely blindness to his own sin, but a danger to the young wife.

Haney, however, though wounded and suffering, was still a lion in
resolution, and his glance checked the exhortation which the minister
one day nerved himself to utter. "I do not interfere with any man's
faith," said he, "and I do not intend to be put to school by you nor any
other livin'. I was raised a Catholic, and for the sake of me mother I
call meself wan to this day, and as I am so I shall die." And the
finality of his voice won him freedom from further molestation.

Bertha's concern for her creed was hardly more poignant than Haney's,
and they never argued; but she did begin to give puzzled thought to the
social complications which opened out day by day before her. Charles,
embittered by his failures, enlightened her still more profoundly. He
had a certain shrewdness of comment at times which bit. "Wouldn't it jar
you," said he one day, "to see this little town sporting a 'Smart Set'
and quoting _Town Topics_ like a Bible? Why, some of these dinky little
two-spot four-flushers draw the line on me because I'm an actor! What
d'ye think o' that? I don't mind your Methodist sistern walking wide of
me, but it's another punch when these dubs who are smoking my cigars at
the club fail to invite me to their houses."

Bertha looked at him reflectively throughout this speech, putting a
different interpretation on the neglect he complained of. She had gone
beyond disliking him, she despised him (for he was growing bolder each
day in his addresses), and took every precaution that he should not be
alone with her; and she rose one morning with the determination to tell
Mart that she would not endure his brother's presence another day. But
his pleasure in Charles' company was too genuine to be disturbed, and so
she endured.

The actor's t