gh he could not follow her and
penetrate its seclusion now, he could later--thanks to his old
associations with the padres of the contiguous college--gain an
introduction to the Lady Superior on some pretext. She was safe there
that night. He turned away with a feeling of relief. The incongruity
of her retreat assumed a more favorable aspect to his hopes. He looked
at the hallowed walls and the slumbering peacefulness of the gnarled
old trees that hid the convent, and a gentle reminiscence of his youth
stole over him. It was not the first time that he had gazed wistfully
upon that chaste refuge where, perhaps, the bright eyes that he had
followed in the quaint school procession under the leafy Alameda in the
afternoon, were at last closed in gentle slumber. There was the very
grille through which the wicked Conchita--or, was it Dolores?--had shot
her Parthian glance at the lingering student. And the man of
thirty-five, prematurely gray and settled in fortune, smiled as he
turned away, and forgot the adventuress of thirty who had brought him
there.

The next morning he was up betimes and at the college of San Jose.
Father Cipriano, a trifle more snuffy and aged, remembered with delight
his old pupil. Ah! it was true, then, that he had become a mining
president, and that was why his hair was gray; but he trusted that Don
Preble had not forgot that this was not all of life, and that fortune
brought great responsibilities and cares. But what was this, then? He
HAD thought of bringing out some of his relations from the States, and
placing a niece in the convent. That was good and wise. Ah, yes. For
education in this new country, one must turn to the church. And he
would see the Lady Superior? Ah! that was but the twist of one's
finger and the lifting of a latch to a grave superintendent and a gray
head like that. Of course, he had not forgotten the convent and the
young senoritas, nor the discipline and the suspended holidays. Ah! it
was a special grace of our Lady that he, Father Cipriano, had not been
worried into his grave by those foolish muchachos. Yet, when he had
extinguished a snuffy chuckle in his red bandana handkerchief, Key knew
that he would accompany him to the convent that noon.

It was with a slight stirring of shame over his elaborate pretext that
he passed the gate of the Sacred Heart with the good father. But it is
to be feared that he speedily forgot that in the unexpected information
th