is perfectly contented with, the system which he professes. Odd, isn't it ?"

Then when he reached Europe, there came one account after another of churches, hospitals, organized work for helping the poor, descriptions of Catholic friends whom Jaspar wished she could meet, till Mrs. Rolandson knew not whither to turn in the perplexity into which her mind was thrown; and now, on this dull May morning, there fell upon her like a thunderbolt the news which Jaspar's latest letter contained.

have this week received the sacraments, and I am, thank God, a Catholic.

"It is an abrupt way of stating it, but how can I write in any other way? I know that no argument could alter the decision of your judgment that earthly motives alone could work such changes, and so all your friends will tell you. Mother, I long to see you. Come to me at once, as soon as you can possibly leave home, and be with us for our wedding, and give this orphan girl a mother, and find a daughter once again in her."

Then, in stiff foreign writing, another hand had added: "Dear Madam, I pray you to come to your Lucia, who craves a little portion of your heart," and in the letter was a sketch of a sweet face, with great dark eyes and sensitive mouth, whose expression betokened to Mrs. Rolandson the innocent, happy, but easily grieved heart of a little girl. Suddenly Mrs. Rolandson bent down and kissed the face. Suddenly all that love which she had fancied was buried deep in her children's graves asserted its old place in her, and clamored for food.

"I have often written to you of my friend the Marquis D'Avila and his sister Lady Lucia, and I have tried to tell you how lovely she is. Mother, have you a place in your heart for a daughter who bears your own Lucy's name and is willing to take mine? It will not pain you that she is a foreigner, but you will grieve because she is a Catholic. However, I must tell you now what I have long wanted to tell you, that nothing but the Catholic Church can ever make a Christian of me. I must have something tangible and authoritative and unerring, if I am to submit myself to any religious organization. You will say, in pitying wonder at my weakness, that my reason has not been convinced; that I become a Catholic only because I love a Catholic. I beg your pardon, mother; my reason was convinced before ever I saw Lady Lucia, but my pride would not bend itself to the humiliation of the confessional, nor was I willing to declare myself a Christian. If for my complete conversion God made use of a woman's holy life, and her steadfast determination to renounce an earthly love rather than marry one who did not hold the true Faith, it is not the first time he has used such means to work his will. I have little to tell What was it that he used to be? you of 'experiences,' or 'feelings,' Mrs. Rolandson asked herself. Was or 'inward assurances.' If there is she sure she wished him to go back a Church, it is my duty to belong to to that mocking talk about holy it, and that settles the matter. I things, that carelessness about eter

VOL. XII.-14

"I want my Lucy, I am going to my Lucy," she sobbed aloud, as if the room were full once more of the large family which she had called her own, instead of being that cheerless void which only sent back an echo to her "Lucy, Lucy."

People talked. Of course they did. Who would have thought it of Jaspar Rolandson! Turned Catholic! Marry a Catholic! It could not be possible. And they comforted his mother with the pleasing assurance that it was only a passing delusion; when the flush of his first love was over, he would come to his sober senses, and be what he used to be.

nity? Still she made no outward the crowd upon the wharves. Their resistance to such consolation, and she and her lady friends found singular comfort in two facts connected with the romantic event, Jaspar was going to marry a veritable court lady, and she was exquisitely beautiful.

But deeper than the vanity which it must be owned Mrs. Rolandson felt, there lay ever that yearning to behold this new Lucy, who day by day became to her bereaved heart the Lucy taken from her fifteen years before.

"I love her already, and she is nothing but a child," she said to her pastor, showing him the gentle face; "perhaps I am the instrument ordained to draw her from her erring teachers, and with her Jaspar will waken also from his delusion to better things."

"Yes," said Mr. Oldon absently, and then he brought his hand down hard upon the table. "It passes my comprehension," he said. "Next to the mystery of original sin, comes, to my mind, the mystery of the Catholic Church; steeped in error as we call her, she is the nearest like Almighty God of anything on earth. We Protestants, divided, wrangling, backbiting, are like dwarfs beside her."

eyes met in greeting before even their hands could meet, and she strove eagerly to read his face. There was a calm there, an earnestness unknown to it before; that was all the difference. When they were settled in the cars, and speeding on to their destination, then, and not till then, the mother asked, slowly and with a fresh wonder in her heart,

"Jaspar, how could you do it? I cannot understand how so strong a soul and so keen a mind as yours could have become enslaved by the Catholic Church."

"I am not going to argue, mother," he answered, and she noted quickly the tone in which he spoke, so changed from the bitter irony, the jesting lightness, to which he had accustomed her. "I can only tell you the truth-the way this matter has presented itself to me. Shall I ?"

"Shall you!" The tears sprang hotly into Mrs. Rolandson's eyes. "It means much to me, Jaspar. It puts us far apart, and I love you so dearly. I want to know all. Perhaps you will change yet."

"Mother," he said, gravely, "there is no change possible for me-none possible, do you understand, except to become an infidel.

Mrs. Rolandson looked her dis- Either there is one Church which

may.

66

Oh, no fear, no fear," said Mr. Oldon, with a pitiful attempt at a smile. "Rome has no charms for me. But she frets and puzzles me, for I cannot understand her. Good night, Mrs. Rolandson. I will send you the tracts I spoke of," and Mr. Oldon went home to strengthen himself by writing a sermon on the deadly errors of the Catholic Church, and to taint his hearers with a repetition of often-repeated slanders against institutions which nevertheless awed and attracted his inmost soul.

July found Mrs. Rolandson in the port of Havre, marking out easily the towering figure of her son among

claims us all, and is mother and mistress of us all, just as there is one Divine Head who is the Lord of us all, or there is no Church and no God." "But we have a church, Jaspar dear."

"Mother! As if you and I do not know well enough that your pastors never dream of teaching that they alone have the needful truth. It seems to me, and I don't mean it harshly, like a farce to think of your divided sects called Christians. It seems a farce to remember how you claim to honor the Bible."

"O, Jaspar! Why? O, Jaspar, how can you say so?"

"For a thousand reasons. there is one now."

Look,

who will find that out, some future happy day, please God. It would not surprise me, if, by loving certain Catholics whom I know, you should come to love their Mother Church also. You don't know what you are going to meet. I have often laughed when thinking of you and Lucia together. She has never met a Protestant like you, and I am sure you have never seen any one like her."

Lucia as though she could never let her go.

"I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you!" she said, her hungry heart taking its revenge upon her for herstern, self-imposed silence, and now that she had broken that silence, making her almost foolish in her mingled sorrow and gladness. "God has given you to me that I may love you! He has given me my own Lucy, my own little daughter, back again!"'

She was warm with excitement and fatigue, and besides, she felt with unusual quickness the difference of cli

And, indeed, she was different from any one whom Mrs. Rolandson had ever seen. It is to be acknowledged that most persons had been wont to stand somewhat in awe of that stately lady; she inspired admiration in al-mate and atmosphere, and so it came most all, but won real love from very few. Children never came and caressed her of their own accord; none had ever done so, except that little Lucy, who had died so many years ago, and for whose clinging arms and lavish kisses her mother had never ceased to long. This new Lucia, meeting her without a thought or a sign of fear, broke down, by one shy bewitching glance, one tender. word, one kiss of a true and unsought fondness for her new mother, every icy barrier of Mrs. Rolandson's nature, and reigned queen in her heart

at once.

Jaspar had never seen his mother so completely overcome. He remembered, indeed, that on the day of his little sister's death, their mother had stayed alone, locked in her room with the lifeless body, for many hours; but when she came among them again, she wore a look of stern composure which nothing altered, and with the same fortitude she had met every after-grief. But now she cried as if her very heart would break. It seemed that the mere sight of eyes so full of love that had no thought of concealing itself, the mere sound of such fearless caressing words, the mere touch of fingers, small and soft like a little child's, nestling confidently in her own, woke every memory of love and joy and bereavement, and she clung to

to pass that for the first time in her life she fell ill with what she had always regarded with contempt and disbelief, "nothing but nervous weakness.” And so it came to pass also that she was taken straight into Lucia's home, where the faintness and loss of strength had come suddenly upon her, and was made an inmate there before the wedding.

For a few days she lay, heeding scarcely anything, except that fair childlike presence that moved about like a noiseless cloud of mingled grateful shadow and gentle sunshine; then, one morning, she woke, quite early, as from a long sleep and pleasant dream.

Day must have dawned, she knew, for she heard the city clock striking five; but the curtains were closed, and only candlelight was in the room. For the first time she looked about her with interest. It was a lofty room in which she lay, frescoed and hung in antique fashion, but the light was too dim and indistinct for her to trace the patterns. She turned her head in the direction from which light came, and saw a small alcove, and in the alcove Lucia was kneeling.

Mrs. Rolandson was feebly sensible that by the codes of her former faith and practice she ought to feel horrified and distressed. She had never seen an altar, but what she now