to discuss the matter either with his mother or with his old tutor.
"Miss Aldis is perhaps jealous," said Herbert, cunningly.
"O Father Herbert!" cried Margaret.
"There is little enough to be jealous of," said Paul.
"There's a fine young man!" cried Herbert. "One would think he had never cared for her."
"It's perfectly true."
"Oh!" said Herbert, in a tone of deep reproach, laying his hand on the young man's arm. "Don't say that."
"Nay, sir, I shall say it. I never said anything less to her. She enchanted me, she entangled me, but, before Heaven, I never loved her!"
"Oh, God help you!" cried the priest. He sat down, and buried his face in his hands. Margaret turned deadly pale, and recalled the scene which had occurred on the receipt of Paul's letter, announcing the rupture of his engagement. "Father Herbert," she cried, "what horrible, hideous mystery do you keep locked up in your bosom? If it concerns me,—if it concerns Paul,—I demand of you to tell us."
Moved apparently by the young girl's tone of agony to a sense of the needfulness of self-control, Herbert uncovered his face, and directed to Margaret a rapid glance of entreaty. She perceived that it meant that, at any cost, she should be silent. Then, with a sublime attempt at dissimulation, he put out his hands, and laid one on each of his companions' shoulders. "Excuse me, Paul," he said, "I'm a foolish old man. Old scholars are a sentimental, a superstitious race. We believe still that all women are angels, and that all men—"
"That all men are fools," said Paul, smiling.
"Exactly. Whereas, you see," whispered Father Herbert, "there are no fools but ourselves."
Margaret listened to this fantastic bit of dialogue with a beating heart, fully determined not to content herself with any such flimsy explanation of the old man's tragical allusions. Meanwhile, Herbert urgently besought Paul to
