uld start and murmur: "I
beg pardon! I didn't quite catch what you were saying." Then I
understood that he had sleepless nights as well as troublous days; and
all the time I was powerless to help him, though I yearned to be able to
do so. What was most aggravating was the complete silence of Father Duff
and his contemporaries during these days of trial, and the contemptuous
and uncharitable criticisms that reached me, but did not reach Father
Letheby, from quondam admirers and friends.

"Sure, we knew well how it would all turn out! These Utopian schemes
generally do end in failure."

"If he had only followed the beaten track, there was every prospect of
success before him; for, mind you, he had a fair share of ability."

"I wonder what will the bishop do?"

"I dare say he'll withdraw faculties and ask him to seek a mission
abroad."

"Well, it is a warning to the other young fellows, who were tempted to
follow him."

I was hoping that the return of Bittra and Ormsby would wean him away
from his anxiety. But this, too, was pitiful and sad beyond words. I
ventured to go see her the morning after their arrival. Ormsby came into
the drawing-room first, and told me all particulars of their journey,
and prepared me to see a great change in his young wife. Nevertheless, I
was startled to see what a transformation a few days' agony had caused.
Bittra had a curious habit of holding her face upwards, like a child,
when she spoke; and this innocent, ingenuous habit, so typical of her
candor and openness of mind, was now accentuated by the look of blank
and utter despair that had crept over her. If she had wept freely, or
been hysterical, it would have been a relief; but no! she appeared
dazed, and as if stricken into stone by the magnitude of her sorrow; and
all the little accidents of home life,--the furniture, the gardens, her
father's room and his wardrobe, his few books, his fishing-rods and
fowling-pieces,--all were souvenirs of one whose place could not be
filled in her soul, and whose tragic end, unsupported by the
ministrations of religion, made the tender and reverent spirit of his
child think of possibilities which no one can contemplate without a
shudder. How different the Catholic from the non-Catholic soul! What an
intense realization of eternity and the future of its immortal spirits
in the one! How utterly callous and indifferent to that immortality is
the other! What an awful idea of God's justice in the one