his father came in one day in the autumn from a
walk through the priory garden that lay beyond the western moat. As they
passed in the level sunshine along the prim box-lined paths, and had
reached the centre where the dial stood, they heard voices in the
summer-house that stood on the right behind a yew hedge.

Sir James hesitated a moment; and as he waited heard Margaret's voice
with a thrill of passion in it.

"I cannot listen to that, mother. It is wicked to say such things."

The two turned instantly, passed along the path and came round the
corner.

Margaret was standing with one hand on the little table, half-turned to
go. Her eyes were alight with indignation, and her lips trembled. Her
mother sat on the other side, her silver-handled stick beside her, and
her hands folded serenely together.

Sir James looked from one to the other; and there fell a silence.

"Are you coming with us, Margaret?" he said.

The girl still hesitated a moment, glancing at her mother, and then
stepped out of the summer-house. Chris saw that bitter smile writhe and
die on the elder woman's face, but she said nothing.

Margaret burst out presently when they had crossed the moat and were
coming up to the long grey-towered house.

"I cannot bear such talk, father," she said, with her eyes bright with
angry tears, "she was saying such things about Rusper, and how idle we
all were there, and how foolish."

"You must not mind it, my darling. Your mother does not--does not
understand."

"There was never any one like Mother Abbess," went on the girl. "I never
saw her idle or out of humour; and--and we were all so busy and happy."

Her eyes overflowed a moment; her father put his arm tenderly round her
shoulders, and they went in together.

It was a terrible thing for Margaret to be thrown like this out of the
one life that was a reality to her. As she looked back now it seemed as
if the convent shone glorified and beautiful in a haze of grace. The
discipline of the house had ordered and inspired the associations on
which memories afterwards depend, and had excluded the discordant notes
that spoil the harmonies of secular life. The chapel, with its delicate
windows, its oak rails, its scent of flowers and incense, its tiled
floor, its single row of carved woodwork and the crosier by the Abbess's
seat, was a place of silence instinct with a Divine Presence that
radiated from the hanging pyx; it was these particular things, and not