sugar-basin that the hotel can produce. I can quite understand

that your literary labors have tried your nerves," he said to
Romayne, when he had ordered the coffee. "The mere title of your

work overwhelms an idle man like me. 'The Origin of
Religions'--what an immense subject! How far must we look back to

find out the first worshipers of the human family?--Where are the
hieroglyphics, Mr. Romayne, that will give you the earliest

information? In the unknown center of Africa, or among the ruined
cities of Yucatan? My own idea, as an ignorant man, is that the

first of all forms of worship must have been the worship of the
sun. Don't be shocked, Father Benwell--I confess I have a certain

sympathy with sun-worship. In the East especially, the rising of
the sun is surely the grandest of all objects--the visible symbol

of a beneficent Deity, who gives life, warmth and light to the
world of his creation."

"Very grand, no doubt," remarked Father Benwell, sweetening his
coffee. "But not to be compared with the noble sight at Rome,

when the Pope blesses the Christian world from the balcony of St.
Peter's."

"So much for professional feeling!" said Mr. Winterfield. "But,
surely, something depends on what sort of man the Pope is. If we

had lived in the time of Alexander the Sixth, would you have
called _him_ a part of that noble sight?"

"Certainly--at a proper distance," Father Benwell briskly
replied. "Ah, you heretics only know the worst side of that most

unhappy pontiff! Mr. Winterfield, we have every reason to believe
that he felt (privately) the truest remorse."

"I should require very good evidence to persuade me of it."
This touched Romayne on a sad side of his own personal

experience. "Perhaps," he said, "you don't believe in remorse?"
"Pardon me," Mr. Winterfield rejoined, "I only distinguish

between false remorse and true remorse. We will say no more of
Alexander the Sixth, Father Benwell. If we want an illustration,

I will supply it, and give no offense. True remorse depends, to
my mind, on a man's accurate knowledge of his own motives--far

from a common knowledge, in my experience. Say, for instance,
that I have committed some serious offense--"

Romayne could not resist interrupting him. "Say you have killed
one of your fellow-creatures," he suggested.

"Very well. If I know that I really meant to kill him, for some
vile purpose of my own; and if (which by no means always follows)

I am really capable of feeling the enormity of my own crime--that
is, as I think, true remorse. Murderer as I am, I have, in that

case, some moral worth still left in me. But if I did _not_ mean
to kill the man--if his death was my misfortune as well as

his--and if (as frequently happens) I am nevertheless troubled by
remorse, the true cause lies in my own inability fairly to

realize my own motives--before I look to results. I am the
ignorantvictim of false remorse; and if I will only ask myself

boldly what has blinded me to the true state of the case, I shall
find the mischief due to that misdirected appreciation of my own

importance which is nothing but egotism in disguise."
"I entirely agree with you," said Father Benwell; "I have had

occasion to say the same thing in the confessional."
Mr. Winterfield looked at his dog, and changed the subject. "Do

you like dogs, Mr. Romayne?" he asked. "I see my spaniel's eyes
saying that he likes you, and his tail begging you to take some

notice of him."
Romayne caressed the dog rather absently.

His new friend had unconsciously presented to him a new view of
the darker aspect of his own life. Winterfield's refined,

pleasant manners, his generousreadiness in placing the treasures
of his library at a stranger's disposal, had already appealed

irresistibly to Romayne's sensitive nature. The favorable
impression was now greatly strengthened by the briefly bold

treatment which he had just heard of a subject in which he was
seriously interested. "I must see more of this man," was his

thought, as he patted the companionable spaniel.
Father Benwell's trained observation followed the vivid changes

of expression on Romayne's face, and marked the eager look in his
eyes as he lifted his head from the dog to the dog's master. The

priest saw his opportunity and took it.
"Do you remain long at Ten Acres Lodge?" he said to Romayne.

"I hardly know as yet. We have no other plans at present."
"You inherit the place, I think, from your late aunt, Lady

Berrick?"
"Yes."

The tone of the reply was not encouraging; Romayne felt no
interest in talking of Ten Acres Lodge. Father Benwell persisted.

"I was told by Mrs. Eyrecourt," he went on "that Lady Berrick had
some fine pictures. Are they still at the Lodge?"

"Certainly. I couldn't live in a house without pictures."
Father Benwell looked at Winterfield. "Another taste in common

between you and Mr. Romayne," he said, "besides your liking for
dogs."

This at once produced the desired result. Romayne eagerly invited
Winterfield to see his pictures. "There are not many of them," he

said. "But they are really worth looking at. When will you come?"
"The sooner the better," Winterfield answered, cordially. "Will

to-morrow do--by the noonday light?"
"Whenever you please. Your time is mine."

Among his other accomplishments, Father Benwell was a
chess-player. If his thoughts at that moment had been expressed

in language, they would have said, "Check to the queen."
CHAPTER IV.

THE END OF THE HONEYMOON.
ON the next morning, Winterfield arrived alone at Romayne's

house.
Having been included, as a matter of course, in the invitation to

see the pictures, Father Benwell had made an excuse, and had
asked leave to defer the proposed visit. From his point of view,

he had nothing further to gain by being present at a second
meeting between the two men--in the absence of Stella. He had it

on Romayne's own authority that she was in constant attendance on
her mother, and that her husband was alone. "Either Mrs.

Eyrecourt will get better, or she will die," Father Benwell
reasoned. "I shall make constant inquiries after her health, and,

in either case, I shall know when Mrs. Romayne returns to Ten
Acres Lodge. After that domestic event, the next time Mr.

Winterfield visits Mr. Romayne, I shall go and see the pictures."
It is one of the defects of a super-subtle intellect to trust too

implicitly to calculation, and to leave nothing to chance. Once
or twice already Father Benwell had been (in the popular phrase)

a little too clever--and chance had thrown him out. As events
happened, chance was destined to throw him out once more.

Of the most modest pretensions, in regard to numbers and size,
the pictures collected by the late Lady Berrick were masterly

works of modern art. With few exceptions, they had been produced
by the matchless English landscape painters of half a century

since. There was no formalgallery here. The pictures were so few
that they could be hung in excellent lights in the different

living-rooms of the villa. Turner, Constable, Collins, Danby,
Callcott, Linnell--the master of Beaupark House passed from one

to the other with the enjoyment of a man who thoroughly
appreciated the truest and finest landscape art that the world

has yet seen.
"You had better not have asked me here," he said to Romayne, in

his quaintly good-humored way. "I can't part with those pictures
when I say good-by to-day. You will find me calling here again

and again, till you are perfectly sick of me. Look at this sea
piece. Who thinks of the brushes and palette of _that_ painter?