rival, had established an unassailable
supremacy. From her, according to Mrs. Fletcher, proceeded most of the
scandalous suggestions which had attached themselves to Mrs. Baske's
name. This lady had not scrupled to state it as a fact in her certain
knowledge that Mrs. Baske was become a Papist. To this end, it seemed,
was the suspicion of Bartles mainly directed--the Scarlet Woman throned
by the Mediterranean had made a victim of her who was once a light in
the re-reformed faith. That was the reason, said Mrs. Welland, why the
owner of Redbeck House continued to dwell in foreign parts. If ever she
came back at all, it would be as an insidious enemy; but more likely
she would never return; possibly her life would close in a convent,
like that of other hapless Englishwomen whose personal property excited
the covetousness of the Pope. In the Bartles newspaper there had
appeared, from time to time, enigmatic paragraphs, which Mrs. Welland
and her intimates made the subject of much gossip; these passages
alluded either to a certain new chapel which seemed very long in
getting its foundations laid, or to a certain former inhabitant of
Bartles, who found it necessary, owing to the sad state of her health,
to make long residence in Roman Catholic countries. Mrs. Fletcher had
preserved these newspapers, and now produced them. Miriam read and
smiled.

"Why didn't it occur to them to suggest that I had become an atheist?"

Mrs. Fletcher screamed with horror. No, no; Bartles did not contain any
one so malicious as that. After all, whatever had been said was merely
the outcome of a natural disappointment. All would be put right again.
To-morrow was Sunday, and when Miriam appeared in the chapel--

"I have no intention of going to chapel."

On Monday morning she returned to London. Excepting Mrs. Fletcher and
her daughters, she had spoken with no one in Bartles. She came away
with a contemptuous hatred of the place--a resolve never to see it
again.

This had been the one thing needed to make Miriam as intolerant in
agnosticism as she formerly was in dogma. Henceforth she felt the
animosity of a renegade. In the course of a few hours her soul had
completed its transformation, and at the incitement of that pride which
had always been the strongest motive within her. Her old faith was now
identified with the cackle of Bartles, and she flung it behind her with
disdain.

Not that she felt insulted by the supposition that she had t