ck, and Charles had been admitted into
the communion of the Catholic Church about an hour since. He was still
kneeling in the church of the Passionists before the Tabernacle, in the
possession of a deep peace and serenity of mind, which he had not
thought possible on earth. It was more like the stillness which almost
sensibly affects the ears when a bell that has long been tolling stops,
or when a vessel, after much tossing at sea, finds itself in harbour. It
was such as to throw him back in memory on his earliest years, as if he
were really beginning life again. But there was more than the happiness
of childhood in his heart; he seemed to feel a rock under his feet; it
was the _soliditas Cathedrae Petri_. He went on kneeling, as if he were
already in heaven, with the throne of God before him, and angels around;
and as if to move were to lose his privilege.

At length he felt a light hand on his shoulder, and a voice said,
"Reding, I am going; let me just say farewell to you before I go." He
looked around; it was Willis, or rather Father Aloysius, in his dark
Passionist habit, with the white heart sewed in at his left breast.
Willis carried him from the church into the sacristy. "What a joy,
Reding!" he whispered, when the door closed upon them; "what a day of
joy! St. Edward's day, a doubly blessed day henceforth. My Superior let
me be present; but now I must go. You did not see me, but I was present
through the whole."

"Oh," said Charles, "what shall I say?--the face of God! As I knelt I
seemed to wish to say this, and this only, with the Patriarch, 'Now let
me die, since I have seen Thy Face.'"

"You, dear Reding," said Father Aloysius, "have keen fresh feelings;
mine are blunted by familiarity."

"No, Willis," he made answer, "you have taken the better part betimes,
while I have loitered. Too late have I known Thee, O Thou ancient Truth;
too late have I found Thee, First and only Fair."

"All is well, except as sin makes it ill," said Father Aloysius; "if you
have to lament loss of time before conversion, I have to lament it
after. If you speak of delay, must not I of rashness? A good God
overrules all things. But I must away. Do you recollect my last words
when we parted in Devonshire? I have thought of them often since; they
were too true then. I said, 'Our ways divide.' They are different still,
yet they are the same. Whether we shall meet again here below, who
knows? but there will be a meeting ere long be