ing your own ground without gaining a victory over her. Your father seems to afford her strong arguments for the step she intends taking, and Georgie Lumley has lent her several books at different times."

"Well, Arthur, your room is all ready, so won't you come and see old Phoebe before you go and get ready for dinner?" said Anna.

"What! is the old body still with you, aunt? she must have been in your service twenty years nearly." Yes, getting on for that, I don't like strangers and hate modern servants, so does Phoebe, so we suit each other. Poor Mrs. Aitkin, who has as you know had to take a smaller house through losing money in some of those horrid foreign loans, advertised for a cook the other day. A woman elaborately dressed called to know what the place was. Mrs. Aitkin told her and was giving her further particulars when 'My lady' observes, 'It won't suit me, mum; you're going down in the world, I'm getting hup.'"

"Well, Auntie, you may well be glad to have old Phoebe and Lizzie, fancy their giving themselves such airs."

After dinner Arthur lit a cigar and went out to have a turn on the East Pier: he had not long gone when Charley Lumley looked in with his sister. Mrs. Lewis discreetly proposed a game of chess with Georgie leaving the other pair to their own devices.

Arthur had hardly passed through the harbour gates

ere he came across a young officer, Dick Lamort, a cousin, who instantly greeted him with "Hullo, Arthur, come to square accounts with those Lumleys for trying to pervert, or I suppose for having perverted your sister?"

66

'Why, what do you mean ?",

"As if you did not know, but the Kent Coast Times knows if you do not. Look here," and he pulled a newspaper out of his pocket and proceeded to read, "Another convert to Rome. We learn that Miss Macdonald, daughter of the Vicar of Sleepytown, either has or is about to join the Church of Rome.""

"I suppose the world can't be wrong, though how an affair which concerns so few got into the paper passes my comprehension. But to answer your question. I'm not going to interfere in the matter. I would rather she did not do so, but if she thinks it right that is the main point.”

Lamort looked angry.

"Well, I protest against it, and I as her cousin. should have been told what was being done, and not left to find it out from a newspaper."

"And I," said Arthur, " think it's rather too absurd your thinking it necessary that a town-crier should go round to all the relations of Mr. Macdonald to inform them of what is no affair of theirs, while as for you saying, 'I protest,' that is delightfully charming."

"It's all very fine, but I don't think it a laughing matter, and I do protest against it, and so”

"Oh very well," said Arthur, "protest away, but a fellow who is as free a liver as you and not altogether blameless in his goings on with the demimonde is not the person to lecture any one about Religion. When you turn religious and become a Communicant you will have a right to express an opinion, but certainly not before."

Lamort puffed hard at his cigar, puzzled what to say; and at last he sneered as a last resource, “You will be turning Papist next, I suppose."

"Come, Dick, don't be vicious; you know you and I have not been so extra-religious that we can go and groan like that old relation of yours who attends Exeter Hall, and scatters tracts by wholesale. My sister is as honest as the day, and if she wished to turn Baptist I should not prevent her."

When they got to the pier-head Lamort saw an acquaintance whom he had met at by-no-means a moral place of amusement in London, and taking off his hat to her, he said to Arthur, "Ta, ta, see you again tomorrow."

"More hypocrisy," muttered Arthur: "however, he will not try and do the T. P. again just yet. Curious how the immoral, or at any rate, the nonreligious world hates Rome as much as Exeter Hall. A queer alliance !"

As this novel, so far as regards adventure, is made subservient to the object desired, we need not describe the reception of Anna Macdonald into the Catholic Church by the Benedictine Father Berta at Ramsgate, nor yet give an elaborate description of the marriage which took place not long after. Mr. Macdonald took no notice of either event. Mrs. Macdonald who slowly rallied from the shock her husband had given her, wrote secretly to her daughter, mourning over her

grievous apostacy," and finished by expressing a hope that God might open her eyes to the errors of Romanism, and bring her back to the Anglican Communion; that her father was too grieved by what she had done to write to, or hear from her, but that if he should feel less hurt she would write and tell her.

Anna and her husband shortly afterwards left for a small house and estate of Mr. Lumley's near Edenderry, in County Kildare, which he made over to them for their own on their marriage. Aunt Lewis pursued the even tenour of her ways, taking life quietly and doing a large amount of good and charitable work without ostentation.

The next chapter brings us on the scene two years after the events last recorded.

CHAPTER VI.

THE RITUALISTIC CURATE.

HUMAN nature is human nature all the world over, and it showed itself in the step which Arthur Macdonald took about two years after his sister's marriage with Charles Lumley. Originally, being a clergyman's son, he had had religious subjects presented to his mind; the manner in which he received these impressions was, as we have in some slight degree seen, unfavourable to their growth. He had, therefore, when he left his school-boy days behind him, thought of the Law as the profession which he should adopt. He had made some progress in his

studies when the secession of his sister and its accompanying bothers, once more directed his thoughts to religious matters; his conversations with Mr. Rashleigh has done good to him, and had set him on the line of thought given by Butler, so that his studies lagged while he read theological books, and finally seeing he could not attend to both, he, much to the surprise of his father, asked him if he had any objec