I begged her to go and see some woman--some kind,
pitiful, understanding woman--but I suppose she feared lest such a one
would dissuade her to more purpose than I was able to do." Agnes looked at him with troubled eyes. "She was very dear to my heart," the priest went on. "She was always a
generous, unselfish child, and she was very, very fond of you, Agnes." Agnes's throat tightened. What Father Ferguson said was only too true. Teresa had always been a very generous and unselfish girl, and very,
very fond of her. She wondered remorsefully if she had omitted to do or
say anything she could have done or said on the day that poor Teresa had
come and spoken such strange, wild words----? "It seems so awful," she said in a low voice, "so very, very awful to
think that we may not even pray for her soul, Father Ferguson." "Not pray for her soul?" the priest repeated. "Why should we not pray
for the poor child's soul? I shall certainly pray for Teresa's soul
every day till I die." "But--but how can you do that, when she killed herself?" He looked at her surprised. "And do you really so far doubt God's mercy? Surely we may hope--nay, trust--that Teresa had time to make an act of
contrition?" And then he muttered something--it sounded like a line or
two of poetry--which Agnes did not quite catch; but she felt, as she
often did feel when with Father Ferguson, at once rebuked and
rebellious. Of course there _might_ have been time for Teresa to make an act of
contrition. But every one knows that to take one's life is a deadly
sin. Agnes felt quite sure that if it ever occurred to herself to do
such a thing she would go straight to hell. Still, she was used to obey
this old priest, and that even when she did not agree with him. So she
followed him into the church, and side by side they knelt down and each
said a separate prayer for the soul of Teresa Maldo. As Agnes Barlow walked slowly and soberly home, this time by the high
road, she tried to remember the words, the lines of poetry, that Father
Ferguson had muttered. They at once haunted and eluded her memory. Surely they could not be

    Between the window and the ground,
    She mercy sought and mercy found. No, Agnes was sure that he had not said "window," and yet window seemed
the only word that would fit the case. And he had not said, "_she_ mercy
found"; he had said, "_he_ mercy sought and mercy found"--of that Agnes
felt sure, and that, too, was odd. But then, Father Ferguson was very
odd sometimes, and he was fond of quoting in his sermons queer little
bits of verse of which no one had ever heard. Suddenly she bethought herself, with more annoyance than the matter was
worth, that in her agitation she had left Mr. Ferrier's newspaper in
the sacristy. She did not like the thought that Father Ferguson would
probably read those pretty, curious verses, "My Lady of the Snow." Also, Agnes had actually forgotten to speak to the old priest of her
impertinent cook! II

We find Agnes Barlow again walking in Summerfield; but this time she is
hurrying along the straight, unlovely cinder-strewn path which forms a
short cut from the back of The Haven to Summerfield station; and the
still, heavy calm of a late November afternoon broods over the rough
ground on either side of her. It is nearly six months since Teresa Maldo's elopement and subsequent
suicide, and now no one ever speaks of poor Teresa, no one seems to
remember that she ever lived, excepting, perhaps, Father Ferguson....

As for Agnes herself, life had crowded far too many happenings into the
last few weeks for her to give more than a passing thought to Teresa;
indeed, the image of her dead friend rose before her only when she was
saying her prayers. And as Agnes, strange to say, had grown rather
careless as to her prayers, the memory of Teresa Maldo was now very
faint indeed. An awful, and to her an incredible, thing had happened to Agnes Barlow. The roof of her snug and happy House of Life had fallen in, and she lay,
blinded and maimed, beneath the fragments which had been hurled down on
her in one terrible moment. Yes, it had all happened in a moment--so she now reminded herself, with
the dull ache which never left her. It was just after she had come back from Westgate with little Francis. The child had been ailing for the first time in his life, and she had
taken him to the seaside for six weeks. There, in a day, it had turned from summer to winter, raining as it only
rains at the seaside; and suddenly Agnes had made up her mind to go back
to her own nice, comfortable home a whole week before Frank expected her
back. Agnes sometimes acted like that--on a quick impulse; she did so to her
own undoing on that dull, rainy day. When she reached Summerfield, it was to find her telegram to her husband
lying unopened on the hall table of The Haven. Frank, it seemed, had
slept in town the night before. Not that that mattered, so she told
herself gleefully, full of the pleasant joy of being again in her own
home; the surprise would be the greater and the more welcome when Frank
did come back. Having nothing better to do that first afternoon, Agnes had gone
up to her husband's dressing-room in order to look over his summer
clothes before sending them to the cleaner. In her careful,
playing-at-housewifely fashion, she had turned out the pockets
of his cricketing coat. There, a little to her surprise, she had
found three letters, and idle curiosity as to Frank's invitations
during her long stay away--Frank was deservedly popular with the
ladies of Summerfield and, indeed, with all women--caused her to
take the three letters out of their envelopes. In a moment--how terrible that it should take but a moment to shatter
the fabric of a human being's innocent House of Life!--Agnes had seen
what had happened to her--to him. For each of these letters, written in
the same sloping woman's hand, was a love letter signed "Janey"; and in
each the writer, in a plaintive, delicate, but insistent and reproachful
way, asked Frank for money. Even now, though nearly seven weeks had gone by since then, Agnes could
recall with painful vividness the sick, cold feeling that had come over
her--a feeling of fear rather than anger, of fear and desperate
humiliation. Locking the door of the dressing-room, she had searched eagerly--a
dishonourable thing to do, as she knew well. And soon she had found
other letters--letters and bills; bills of meals at restaurants, showing
that her husband and a companion had constantly dined and supped at the
Savoy, the Carlton, and Prince's. To those restaurants where he had
taken her, Agnes, two or three times a year, laughing and grumbling at
the expense, he had taken this--this _person_ again and again in the
short time his wife had been away.