ould
be done, and soon after retired.

I went to my room, too, but not to sleep. I was too miserably
anxious about the morrow. The night was lovely--bright as day and
warm as midsummer. I sat by the window looking out, and saw Kate
walking up and down the tamarack avenue with that mysterious Mr.
Richards. They lingered there for over an hour, and then I heard
them coming softly upstairs, and going to their respective rooms.

Next morning after breakfast, Captain Danton rode down to the
village and had an interview with Father Francis. Two hours after,
they returned to Danton Hall together, both looking pale and ill at
ease. Kate and I were in the drawing-room--she practising a new
song, I sewing. We both rose at their entrance--she gayly; I with
my heart beating thick and fast.

"I am glad the beauty of the day tempted you out, Father Francis,"
she said. "I wish our wanderers would come back. Danton Hall has
been as gloomy as an old bastille lately."

I don't know what Father Francis said. I know he looked as though
the errand he had come to fulfil were unspeakably distasteful to
him.

"Reginald ought to be home to-day," Kate said, walking to the
window, "and Rose next week. It seems like a century since they
went away."

I could wait for no more--I hurried out of the room--crying, I am
afraid. Before I could go upstairs, Captain Danton joined me in the
hall.

"Don't go," he said, hoarsely; "wait here. You may be wanted."

My heart seemed to stand still in vague apprehension of--I hardly
know what. We stood there together waiting, as the few friends who
loved the ill-fated Scottish Queen so well, may have stood when she
laid her head on the block. I looked at that closed door with a
mute terror of what was passing within--every nerve strained to
hear the poor tortured girl's cry of anguish. No such cry ever
came. We waited ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, half an hour, an
hour, before that closed door opened. We shrank away, but it was
only Father Francis, very pale and sad. Our eyes asked the question
our tongues would not utter.

"She knows all," he said, in a tremulous voice; "she has taken it
very quietly--too quietly. She has alarmed me--that unnatural calm
is more distressing than the wildest outburst of weeping."