in Mr. Winterfield's life have connected him with a young lady
named Miss Stella Eyrecourt. If this proves to be the case it is

essential that I should be made acquainted with the whole of the
circumstances.

I have now informed you of all that I want to know. Whatever the
information may be, it is most important that it shall be

information which I can implicitly trust. Please address to me,
when you write, under cover to the friend whose letter I inclose.

I beg your acceptance--as time is of importance--of a check for
preliminary expenses, and remain, sir, your faithful servant,

AMBROSE BENWELL.
II.

_To the Secretary, Society of Jesus, Rome._
I inclose a receipt for the remittance which your last letter

confides to my care. Some of the money has been already used in
prosecuting inquiries, the result of which will, as I hope and

believe, enable me to effectually protect Romayne from the
advances of the woman who is bent on marrying him.

You tell me that our Reverend Fathers, lately sitting in council
on the Vange Abbey affair, are anxious to hear if any positive

steps have yet been taken toward the conversion of Romayne. I am
happily able to gratify their wishes, as you shall now see.

Yesterday, I called at Romayne's hotel to pay one of those
occasional visits which help to keep up our acquaintance. He was

out, and Penrose (for whom I asked next) was with him. Most
fortunately, as the event proved, I had not seen Penrose, or

heard from him, for some little time; and I thought it desirable
to judge for myself of the progress that he was making in the

confidence of his employer. I said I would wait. The hotel
servant knows me by sight. I was shown into Romayne's

waiting-room.
This room is so small as to be a mere cupboard. It is lighted by

a glass fanlight over the door which opens from the passage, and
is supplied with air (in the absence of a fireplace) by a

ventilator in a second door, which communicates with Romayne's
study. Looking about me, so far, I crossed to the other end of

the study, and discovered a dining-room and two bedrooms
beyond--the set of apartments being secluded, by means of a door

at the end of the passage, from the other parts of the hotel. I
trouble you with these details in order that you may understand

the events that followed.
I returned to the waiting-room, not forgetting of course to close

the door of communication.
Nearly an hour must have passed before I heard footsteps in the

passage. The study door was opened,
and the voices of persons entering the room reached me through

the ventilator. I recognized Romayne, Penrose--and Lord Loring.
The first words exchanged among them informed me that Romayne and

his secretary had overtaken Lord Loring in the street, as he was
approaching the hotel door. The three had entered the house

together--at a time, probably, when the servant who had admitted
me was out of the way. However it may have happened, there I was,

forgotten in the waiting-room!
Could I intrude myself (on a private conversation perhaps) as an

unannounced and unwelcomevisitor? And could I help it, if the
talk found its way to me through the ventilator, along with the

air that I breathed? If our Reverend Fathers think I was to
blame, I bow to any reproof which their strict sense of propriety

may inflict on me. In the meantime, I beg to repeat the
interesting passages in the conversation, as nearly word for word

as I can remember them.
His lordship, as the principalpersonage in social rank, shall be

reported first. He said: "More than a week has passed, Romayne,
and we have neither seen you nor heard from you. Why have you

neglected us?"
Here, judging by certain sounds that followed, Penrose got up

discreetly, and left the room. Lord Loring went on.
He said to Romayne: "Now we are alone, I may speak to you more

freely. You and Stella seemed to get on together admirably that
evening when you dined with us. Have you forgotten what you told

me of her influence over you? Or have you altered your
opinion--and is that the reason why you keep away from us?"

Romayne answered: "My opinion remains unchanged. All that I said
to you of Miss Eyrecourt, I believe as firmly as ever."

His lordship remonstrated, naturally enough. "Then why remain
away from the good influence? Why--if it really _can_ be

controlled--risk another return of that dreadful nervous
delusion?"

"I have had another return."
"Which, as you yourself believe, might have been prevented!

Romayne, you astonish me."
There was a time of silence, before Romayne answered this. He was

a little mysterious when he did reply. "You know the old saying,
my good friend--of two evils, choose the least. I bear my

sufferings as one of two evils, and the least of the two."
Lord Loring appeared to feel the necessity of touching a delicate

subject with a light hand. He said, in his pleasant way: "Stella
isn't the other evil, I suppose?"

"Most assuredly not."
"Then what is it?"

Romayne answered, almost passionately: "My own weakness and
selfishness! Faults which I must resist, or become a mean and

heartless man. For me, the worst of the two evils is there. I
respect and admire Miss Eyrecourt--I believe her to be a woman in

a thousand--don't ask me to see her again! Where is Penrose? Let
us talk of something else."

Whether this wild way of speaking offended Lord Loring, or only
discouraged him, I cannot say. I heard him take his leave in

these words: "You have disappointed me, Romayne. We will talk of
something else the next time we meet." The study door was opened

and closed. Romayne was left by himself.
Solitude was apparently not to his taste just then. I heard him

call to Penrose. I heard Penrose ask: "Do you want me?"
Romayne answered: "God knows I want a friend--and I have no

friend near me but you! Major Hynd is away, and Lord Loring is
offended with me."

Penrose asked why.
Romayne, thereupon, entered on the necessary explanation. As a

priest writing to priests, I pass over details utterly
uninteresting to us. The substance of what he said amounted to

this: Miss Eyrecourt had produced an impression on him which was
new to him in his experience of women. If he saw more of her, it

might end--I ask your pardon for repeating the ridiculous
expression--in his "falling in love with her." In this condition

of mind or body, whichever it may be, he would probably be
incapable of the self-control which he had hithertopracticed. If

she consented to devote her life to him, he might accept the
cruel sacrifice. Rather than do this, he would keep away from

her, for her dear sake--no matter what he might suffer, or whom
he might offend.

Imagine any human being, out of a lunaticasylum, talking in this
way. Shall I own to you, my reverendcolleague, how this curious

self-exposure struck me? As I listened to Romayne, I felt
grateful to the famous Council which definitelyforbade the

priests of the Catholic Church to marry. _We_ might otherwise
have been morally enervated by the weakness which degrades

Romayne--and priests might have become instruments in the hands
of women.

But you will be anxious to hear what Penrose did under the
circumstances. For the moment, I can tell you this, he startled

me.