nd of the book that might be written about jesuit houses and of
Mary Rochfort, daughter of lord Molesworth, first countess of Belvedere.

A listless lady, no more young, walked alone the shore of lough Ennel,
Mary, first countess of Belvedere, listlessly walking in the evening,
not startled when an otter plunged. Who could know the truth? Not the
jealous lord Belvedere and not her confessor if she had not committed
adultery fully, _eiaculatio seminis inter vas naturale mulieris,_ with
her husband's brother? She would half confess if she had not all sinned
as women did. Only God knew and she and he, her husband's brother.

Father Conmee thought of that tyrannous incontinence, needed however for
man's race on earth, and of the ways of God which were not our ways.

Don John Conmee walked and moved in times of yore. He was humane and
honoured there. He bore in mind secrets confessed and he smiled at
smiling noble faces in a beeswaxed drawingroom, ceiled with full fruit
clusters. And the hands of a bride and of a bridegroom, noble to noble,
were impalmed by Don John Conmee.

It was a charming day.

The lychgate of a field showed Father Conmee breadths of cabbages,
curtseying to him with ample underleaves. The sky showed him a flock of
small white clouds going slowly down the wind. _Moutonner,_ the French
said. A just and homely word.

Father Conmee, reading his office, watched a flock of muttoning clouds
over Rathcoffey. His thinsocked ankles were tickled by the stubble of
Clongowes field. He walked there, reading in the evening, and heard
the cries of the boys' lines at their play, young cries in the quiet
evening. He was their rector: his reign was mild.

Father Conmee drew off his gloves and took his rededged breviary out. An
ivory bookmark told him the page.

Nones. He should have read that before lunch. But lady Maxwell had come.

Father Conmee read in secret _Pater_ and _Ave_ and crossed his breast.
_Deus in adiutorium._

He walked calmly and read mutely the nones, walking and reading till he
came to _Res_ in _Beati immaculati: Principium verborum tuorum veritas:
in eternum omnia indicia iustitiae tuae._

A flushed young man came from a gap of a hedge and after him came a
young woman with wild nodding daisies in her hand. The young man raised
his cap abruptly: the young woman abruptly bent and with slow care
detached from her light skirt a clinging twig.

Father Conmee blessed both gravely and turned a thi