“What do you mean? What has happened to the Abbey?”
“It has become an Abbey,” said Murrel gravely.
“What do you mean?” cried the other, leaning forward with sudden eagerness.
“I mean what I say. It has become an Abbey. I have just been talking to the Abbot. He told me a good deal of the news, in spite of his monastic seclusion; for he knows a number of our old friends.”
“You mean it is a monastery. What news did he give you?”
“He was full of Society Snippets,” said Murrel in his melancholy voice. “It all began with Lord Seawood dying about a year ago. The property went to his—his heiress, who it seems has ‘gone over’ as the saying is. She’s become a Catholic; and a very extraordinary sort of Catholic too. She has given up all this vast property to my friend the Abbot and his merry men
