ss of my heart, that I may
bewail my sins and rightly confess them_."

But the labouring of my spirit was like the flight of a bat in the
daylight. Though I tried hard to keep my mind from wandering, I could
not do so. Again and again it went back to the lady in furs with the
coroneted carriage and the high-stepping horses.

She was about my own age, and she began to rise before my tightly closed
eyes as a vision of what I might have been myself if I had not given up
everything for love--wealth, rank, title, luxury.

God is my witness that down to that moment I had never once thought I
had made any sacrifice, but now, as by a flash of cruel lightning, I saw
myself as I was--a peeress who had run away from her natural condition
and was living in the slums, working like any other work-girl.

Even this did not hurt me much, but when I thought of the rosy-faced
child in the carriage, and then of my own darling at Mrs. Oliver's as I
had seen her last, so thin and pale, and with her little bib stained by
her curdled milk, a feeling I had never had before pierced to my very
soul.

I asked myself if this was what God looked down upon and permitted--that
because I had obeyed what I still believed to be the purest impulse of
my nature, love, my child must be made to suffer.

Then something hard began to form in my heart. I told myself that what I
had been taught to believe about God was falsehood and deception.

All this time I was trying to hush down my mind by saying my prayer,
which called on the gracious Virgin Mary to intercede for me with my
Redeemer, and the holy Saints of God to assist me.

"_Assist me by thy grace, that I may be able to declare my sins to the
priest, thy Vicar_."

It was of no use. Every moment my heart was hardening, and what I had
intended to confess about my wicked thoughts of the night before was
vanishing away. At last I rose to my feet and, lifting my head, looked
boldly up at the altar.

Just at that moment the young peeress, having finished her confession,
went off with a light step and a cheerful face. Her kneeling-place at
the confessional box was now vacant, yet I did not attempt to take it,
and some minutes passed in which I stood biting my lips to prevent a
cry. Then the priest parted his curtains and beckoned to me, and I moved
across and stood stubbornly by the perforated brass grating.

"Father," I said, as firmly as I could, for my throat was fluttering, "I
came here to make