the little chapel on the right of the entrance. He hesitated, and then
went to it and stood leaning with his hands upon the heavy marble
balustrade, that was low for his great height as he stood on the step.

A single silver lamp sent a faint light upwards that lingered upon the
Pieta above the altar, upon the marble limbs of the dead Christ, upon
the features of the Blessed Virgin, the Addolorata--the sorrowing
mother.

Bending a little, as though very weary, the friendless, wifeless,
childless man raised his furrowed face and looked up. There was no hope
any more, and his despair was heavy upon him whose young love had
blasted the lives of many.

His teeth were set--he could have bitten through iron. He trembled a
little, and as he looked upward, two dreadful tears--the tears of the
strong that are as blood--welled from his eyes and trickled down upon
his cheeks.

"Maria Addolorata!" he whispered.

CHAPTER XLVII.

FRANCESCA had half risen from her seat when she had seen that Lord Redin
did not hear her voice, calling to him. Then she realized that she could
not overtake him without running, since he had got so far, and she kept
her place, leaning back once more, and trying to collect her thoughts
before going home. The music was still going on in the Chapel of the
Choir, and though it was dusk in the vast church, it would not be dark
for some time. The vergers did not make their rounds to give warning of
the hour of closing until sunset. Francesca sat still and tried to
understand what she had heard. She was nervous and shaken, and she
wished that she were already at home. The great dimness of the lonely
transept was strangely mysterious--and the tale of the dead girl, burned
to take the place of the living, was grewsome, and made her shiver with
disgust and horror. She started nervously at the sound of a distant
footstep.

But the strongest impression she had, was that of abhorrence for the
unholy deeds of the man who had just left her. To a woman for whom
religion in its forms as well as in its meaning was the mainstay of
life on earth and the hope of life to come, the sacrilege of the crime
seemed supernatural. She felt as though it must be in some way her duty
to help in expiating it, lest the punishment of it should fall upon all
her race. And as she thought it over, trying to look at it as simply as
she could, she surveyed at a glance the whole chain of the fatal story,
and saw how many terrible