earthly
felicity was attained. It seems rather sordid, this marrying for wealth
and title. I hardly thought Kate Danton would do it; but it appears I
have made a foolish mistake."

"Thank you," Kate said, very slowly. "I came here to ask you to be cruel
to me--to tell me hard truths. You know how to be cruel very well,
Father Francis."

"Why do you come to me for hard truths?" said the priest, rather coldly.
"You have been deluding yourself all along; why don't you go on? What is
the use of telling you the truth? You will do as you like in the end."

"Perhaps not. I have not fallen quite so low as you think. I dare say
you despise me, but you can hardly despise me more than I despise
myself."

"Then why walk on in the path that leads you downward? Why not stop
before it is too late?"

"It is too late now!"

"Stuff and nonsense! That is more of your self-delusion. You, or rather
that pride of yours, which has been the great stumbling-block of your
life, leads you on in that self-delusion. Too late! It would not be too
late if you were before the altar! Better stop now and endure the
humiliation than render your own and this man's future life miserable.
You will never be happy as Sir Ronald Keith's wife; he will never be
happy as your husband. I know how you are trying to delude yourself; I
know you are trying to believe you will love him and be happy by-and-by.
Don't indulge such sophistry any longer; don't be led away by your own
pride and folly."

"Pride and folly!" she echoed indignantly.

"Yes, I repeat it. Your heart, your conscience, must own the truth of
what I say, if your lips will not. Would you ever have accepted Sir
Ronald Keith if your father had not been about to marry Grace Danton?"

The sudden flush that overspread her face answered for her, though she
did not speak. She sat looking straight before her into vacancy, with a
hard, despairing look in her dark, deep eyes.

"You know you would not. But your father is going to marry a most
excellent and most estimable woman; his affection is not wholly his
daughter's any longer; she must stand a little in the shade, and see
another reign where she used to be queen. She cannot hold the first
place in her father's heart and home; so she is ready to leave that home
with the first man who asks her. She does not love him; there is no
sympathy or feeling in common between them; they are not even of the
same religion; she knows that she will be wretched,