"I have no bishops to offer," said Pere Michaux, with mock humility;
"only ordinary priests. I will therefore leave Anne to your care, Miss
Lois--yours and Dr. Gaston's."

So the discussion ended, and Miss Lois came off with Protestant colors
flying. None the less Pere Michaux wrote his letters; and Dr. Gaston did
not write his. For the two men understood each other. There was no need
for the old chaplain to say, plainly, "I have lived out of the world so
long that I have not a single clerical friend this side of New York upon
whom I can call"; the priest comprehended it without words. And there
was no need for Pere Michaux to parade the close ties and net-work of
communication which prevailed in the ancient Church to which he
belonged; the chaplain knew them without the telling. Each understood
the other; and being men, they could do without the small teasing
comments, like the buzzing of flies, with which women enliven their
days. Thus it happened that Anne Douglas travelled from the northern
island across to the great city on the ocean border in the charge of the
Roman Catholic Church.

She arrived in New York worn out and bewildered, and having lost her
sense of comparison by the strangeness and fatigue of the long journey,
she did not appreciate the city's size, the crowded streets, and roar of
traffic, but regarded everything vaguely, like a tired child who has
neither surprise nor attention to give.

At length the carriage stopped; she went up a broad flight of stone
steps; she was entering an open door. Some one was speaking to her; she
was in a room where there were chairs, and she sank down. The priest who
had brought her from the other side of the river was exchanging a few
words with a lady; he was going; he was gone. The lady was coming toward
her.

"You are very tired, my child;" she said. "Let me take you a moment to
Tante, and then you can go to your room."

"To Tante?" said Anne.

"Yes, to Tante, or Madame Moreau, the principal of the school. She
expects you."

CHAPTER IX.

"Manners--not what, but _how_. Manners are happy ways of doing
things; each once a stroke of genius or of love--now repeated and
hardened into usage. Manners require time; nothing is more vulgar
than haste."--EMERSON.

Madame Moreau was a Frenchwoman, small and old, with a thin shrewd face
and large features. She wore a plain black satin gown, the narrow skirt
gathered in the old-fashioned s