certain reservations, feeling that there was
growing in me some antagonistic quality
which prevented my full sympathy with both.

"But," I thought, '' he is a Jesuit; he follows
the law of his order, which allows temporising,
and diplomatising, for noble ends.
He merely dresses up the Truth, aud puts it in
the most charming and safest light, even as
we do our images of the Holy Virgin, using
them for the adoration of the crowd, but
ourselves worshipping them still. I do believe,
much as he will dandle and play with the
Truth, that, not for his hope of Heaven, would
Anastasius stoop to a lie."

One day, he told me he should bring to my
saloons an Englishman, his relative, who had
determined on leaving the world and entering
the priesthood.

"Is he of our faith?" asked I indifferently.

"He is, from childhood. He has a strong,
fine intellect; this, under fit guidance, may
accomplish great things. Once of our Society,
he might be my right hand in every Court in
Europe. You will receive him?"

"Certainly."

But I paid very little heed to the stranger.
There was nothing about him striking or
peculiar. He was the very opposite of M.
Anastasius. Besides, he was young, and I
had learnt to despise youth — my guardian
was fifty years old.

Mr. Saltram (you will already have guessed
that it was he) showed equal indifference to
me. He watched me sometimes, did little
kindnesses for me, but always was quiet and
silent— a mere cloud floating in the brilliant
sky, which M. Anastasius lit up as its gorgeous
sun. For me, I became moonlike, appearing
chiefly at my cousin's set and rise.

I was not happy. I read more in my Holy
Book and less in my breviary: I watched
with keener, harder eyes my cousin Anastasius,
weighed all his deeds, listened to and
compared his words: my intellect worshipped
him, my memoried tenderness clung round
him still, but my conscience had fled out of
his keeping, aud made for itself a higher and
diviner ideal. Measured with common men,
he was godlike yet— above all passions,
weaknesses, crimes; but viewed by the one perfect
standard of man — Christian man — in charity,
humility, single-mindedness, guilelessness,
truth— my idol was no more. I came to look
for it, and found only the empty shrine.

He went on a brief mission to Rome. I
marvelled that, instead of as of yore wandering
sadly through the empty house, its air
felt freer for me to breathe in. It seemed
hardly a day till he came back.

I happened to be sitting with his nephew
Alexis when I heard his step down the
corridor— the step which had once seemed at
every touch to draw music from the chords of
my prostrate heart, but which now made it
shrink into itself, as if an iron-shod footfall
had passed along the strings.

Anastasius looked slightly surprised at
seeing us together, but his welcome was very
kind to both.

I could not altogether return it. I had
just found out two things which, to say the
least, had startled me. I determined to prove
them at once.

"My cousin, I thought you were aware that,
though a Catholic myself, my house is open,
and my friendship likewise, to honest men of
every creed. Why did you give your relative
so hard an impression of me?  And why did
you not tell me that Mr. Saltram has, for
some years, been a Protestant?"

I know not what reply he made; I know
only that it was ingenious, lengthy, gentle,
courteous— that for the time being it seemed
entirely satisfactory, that we spent all three
together a most pleasant evening. It was
only when I lay down on my bed, face to
face with the solemn Dark, in which dwelt
conscience, truth, and God, that I discovered
how Anastasius had, for some secret — doubtless
blameless, nay, even justifiable purpose,
told of me, and to me, two absolute lies!

Disguise it as he might, excuse it as I might,
and did, they were lies. They haunted me —
flapping their black wings like a couple of
fiends, mopping and mowing behind him
when he came — sitting on his shoulders, and
mocking his beautiful, calm, majestic face —
for days. That was the beginning of sorrows;
gradually they grew until they blackened my
whole world.

M. Anastasius' whole soul was bent, as he
had for once truly told me, on winning his
young nephew into the true fold, making
him an instrument of that great purpose
which was to bring all Europe, the Popedom
itself, under the power of the Society of
Jesus and its future head — Anastasius.

The young man resisted. He admired and
revered his kinsman; but he himself was
very single-hearted, staunch, and true.
Something in that strong Truth, which was the
basis of his character, struck sympathy with
mine. He was very much inferior in most
things to Anastasius — he knew it, I knew it
— but, through all, this divine element of
Truth was patent, beautifully clear. It was
the one quality I had ever worshipped, ever
sought for, and never found.

Alexis and I became friends — equal, earnest
friends. Not in the way of wooing or
marriage — at least, he never spoke of either;
aud both were far, oh how far! from my
thought — but there was a great and tender
bond between us, which strengthened day
by day.

The link which riveted it was religion.
He was, I said, a Protestant, not adhering to
any creed, but simply living — not preaching,
but living the faith of Our Saviour. He
was not perfect — he had his sins and
shortcomings, even as I. We were both
struggling on towards the glimmering light.
So, after a season, we clasped hands in
friendship, and with eyes steadfastly upward,