The house-surgeon came down to say good-bye. He had always been as free
and friendly as Sister Allworthy would allow. They stood a moment at the
door together.

"Where are you going to?" he asked.

"Anywhere--nowhere--everywhere; to 'all the airts the wind can blaw.'"

It was a clear, bright morning, with a light, keen frost. On looking out,
Glory saw that flags were flying on the public buildings.

"Why, what's going on?" she said.

"Don't you know? It's the ninth of November--Lord Mayor's Day."

She laughed merrily. "A good omen. I'm the female Dick Whittington! Here
goes for it! Good-bye, hospital nursing.--By-bye, doctor."

She dropped him a playful curtsy at the bottom of the steps, and then
tripped along the street.

"What a girl it is!" he thought. "And what is to become of her in this
merciless old London?"

She had taken less than a score of steps from the hospital when blinding
teardrops leaped from her eyes and ran down her cheeks; but she only
dropped her veil and walked on boldly.

SECOND BOOK. _THE RELIGIOUS LIFE._

I.

The Society of the Holy Gethsemane, popularly called the Bishopsgate
Fathers, was one of the many conventual institutions of the English
Church which came as a sequel to the great upheaval of religious feeling
known as the Tractarian or Oxford movement. Most of them gave way under
the pressure of external opposition, some of them broke down under the
strain of internal dissension, and a few lived on as secret brotherhoods,
in obedience to a rule which was never divulged by their members, who
were said to wear a hair shirt next the skin and to scourge themselves
with the lash of discipline.

Of these conventual institutions the Society of the Holy Gethsemane had
been one of the earliest, and it was now quite the oldest, although it
had challenged not only the traditions of the Reformed Church but the
spirit of the age itself by establishing its place of prayer at the very
doors of the Stock Exchange--that crater of volcanic emotions, that
generating house for the electric currents of the world.

Its founder and first Superior had been a man of iron will, who had
fought his way through ecclesiastical courts and popular anger, and even
family persecution, which had culminated in an effort of his own brother
to shut him up as a lunatic. His first disciple and most stanch supporter
had been the Rev. Charles Frederic Lamplugh, a fellow of Corpus, newly
called to order