Chapter XLV: Part IV: She Sang (6)

The drive was not interminable, however, and it was still early in the evening when she reached the house and entered. She stopped at sound of a voice in the drawing‐room. It was Mrs. Ferrier who spoke, but her words were quite sufficient to tell whom she spoke to.

“I shall never, never get over your having been treated so—never!”

“Madam,” said Mr. Schöninger with a decision which scarcely covered his displeasure, “I request as a favor that you will never again mention this subject to me. I am sorry for your trouble in the matter, and grateful for the kindness you have shown me; but you must see that it is something of which I do not wish to be reminded.”

Miss Pembroke’s impulse was to go immediately up‐stairs. A kind of terror seized her at the thought of meeting him. What if he should know that she was making a Novena, and what it was for!

She stopped one moment, irresolute, then went into the bright drawing‐room where the two sat. Mrs. Ferrier uttered a little exclamation, not having heard her come; but Mr. Schöninger had heard the carriage, the door, even the step that paused at sound of their voices, and half divined that he had come near not seeing Miss Pembroke that night.

She gave him her hand with dignified and earnest friendliness. “I cannot tell you how happy you made us all last night,” she said. “You are welcome.”

He found something haughty in her mode of address, like that of a queen speaking to a subject, and looked at her intently to discern its meaning, if possible.

Alarmed at his searching expression, she turned abruptly away from him with unmistakable haughtiness this time. But no sooner had she done so than, smitten by a swift recollection of the folly and injustice of the act, she returned with a glance and gesture so full of mute, impulsive penitence that it more than atoned; it explained.

The proud surprise in his face melted to a quiet smile. He resumed his seat by Mrs. Ferrier, and began to talk with her, taking no further notice of Honora for a few minutes. But when he saw her sitting silent and pale, her momentary trouble forgotten in the recollection of the solemn scenes which she had witnessed in the last few days, he spoke to her.

“I hope you will take some interest in my choir,” he said; “for I wish to improve it very much. The material is bad, the greater part of it. Those persons seem to have been selected who had loud, blatant voices and a firm belief that they were excellent singers. They make noise enough, and are not afraid; but they are vulgar singers. I want a choir of boys in addition to them. You must know some good voices among the children.”

She brightened. It was a pleasant surprise to hear something in common life spoken of, and to have one who knew all assume that all was not lost.

“I know a good many such voices,” she said; “and I should be glad to help you. Could not I make the selection, and teach them the first lessons? It would be small work for you.”

“If you would be so good,” he replied, quite as if he had expected the offer.

And so, without more words, Miss Pembroke was installed as Mr. Schöninger’s musical assistant. It was a timely employment and interest in her changed life, and exerted a softening influence on his. He gradually relinquished the designs he had meditated, and looked on his sufferings in a more impartial light. Whatever prejudice had existed, he could not doubt, when he examined the subject calmly, that he had been condemned on a reasonable array of circumstantial evidence, and that, without prejudice, any other man would have been condemned on the same evidence. Besides, even had there been a chance of success in the attempt, he could not have received as much in legal reparation as was voluntarily given him by the public. The city was, in a manner, at his feet. The highest officials, both in private and in their public capacity, tendered to him their respect, their regrets, and offers of any assistance he might need. People felt that they could not do too much for him. It was quite true, as Mrs. Ferrier said to him: “Now is the time for you to break the law, if you want to. You could do anything, and no one would find fault with you for it.”

For the real criminal, who shall say how it happened that he was not brought to justice? There was certainly an immense activity in searching where he was not. The law put on its most piercing spectacles, then shut its eyes and looked in every direction. The spectacles saw nothing. If they were on the point of having a glimpse, they were instantly turned in another direction. We have all seen such justice when wealth and influence are on the side of the culprit. Letters came from Annette to her mother with only the smallest circumlocution, and answers were sent to them with the most transparent diplomacy in the world.

“When my poor Gerald heard of his mother’s death,” Annette wrote, “I thought for a while that he would die. He lay for hours almost insensible, and only revived from one swoon to fall into another. But he soon recovered from the first shock, and is, I think, glad to know that her sufferings were so short. But he says nothing, and I do not talk to him. I wait to see what God will do with his soul. He is like a frail building that has been overthrown so thoroughly that not one stone remains upon another, and is being built up again in a different shape. I can perceive a strength in the new foundations of his life which I had not believed him capable of. Indeed, he is not humanly capable of them. But this is the city of miracles, and ours is a miraculous faith. As I have told you, he says nothing. His life is almost an absolute silence, and, I might say, blindness to earthly things. I never see him looking at any beautiful or sublime object except the crucifix. Even I seem to be only a voice to him. He begins lately to show a disposition to be active, which is to me a sign that his mind is becoming settled.”

Annette did not think it best to describe the nature of the activity that her husband was showing, well knowing that it would have made Mrs. Ferrier believe herself to be, in addition to her other afflictions, the mother‐ in‐law of a maniac. For the work he did, here and there, wherever it could be quietly done without attracting attention, was menial. She had seen him help the poor man unload his cart of stones, or take the spade from his hands to labor in his stead, and he was constantly performing menial labors in the house. All this was done, not with any appearance of being an eccentric gentleman, but as one of the poor. For day by day his dress had been growing rude and his whole aspect changed. The sun had burnt his fair skin and faded his unshorn beard, and, by means best known to himself, his delicate hands had become dark and rough. Looking at the firm, silent lips and downcast eyes, Annette could scarcely doubt that the man she had called her husband was gradually and purposely effacing all the beauty and daintiness of which he had been so proud. He never went out with her, and if by chance they were likely to encounter in the street, he avoided the meeting. No one, except the people of the house where they lived, suspected that there was any acquaintance or connection between this dainty _signora_ and this man, who grew every day less and less to be distinguished from the common laborer.

But in humbling himself Lawrence Gerald had not been unmindful of the one earthly duty remaining to him. “Are you willing to give me up entirely, Annette?” he asked her one day.

She answered with a brief affirmative. “Follow wherever God leads you,” she said; “and do not stop an instant to think of me.”

He was used to depending on her, and to being sure that she meant what she said, and could perform her promises. Yet he wished to make certain. “You have to go out alone, and have no protection but that of servants,” he said.

“I do not need any other protection; I am quite safe here,” she replied.

“You cannot marry again,” he went on.

“I have no wish to!”

Perhaps there could not have been a stronger proof of the purification which Annette Gerald’s character had undergone than the fact that this reply was made without a tinge of bitterness or regret. She spoke with gentle sincerity—that was all. As an absorbing affection had made her consent to be taken without love, so now a pity and charity yet more engrossing enabled her to find herself discarded without anger.

“Follow God, and think no more of me,” she said. “I remain here. Go when and where you will.”

It was the first time they had spoken together for several days, and was more by accident, apparently, than of their seeking. Passing through the room where Annette was, Lawrence had seen her trying to open a window that resisted her slight hands, and had opened it for her. Then the sweet clangor of the Ave Maria breaking out from all the towers at once, they had paused side by side a moment.

Perhaps he had wished to speak, and seized this opportunity.

At her answer he looked at her earnestly, for the first time in months, it seemed to her, and with a look she could not endure without emotion, so far‐away and mournful, yet so searching, was it. It was a gaze like that of one dying, who sees the impassable gulf widening between his eyes and what they rest upon. How many, many glances she had encountered of his!—laughing, critical, impatient, in the old days that now seemed centuries past; superficially kind, penitent, disregardful, careless, but never from the depths of his soul till now. Now she knew at last that his soul had depths, and that, as she stood before him, he was aware of her, and saw her as she was.

“Annette,” he said, almost in a whisper, “words cannot tell my sense of the wrong and insult which I have heaped upon you—on you more than all the rest put together.”

“Do not speak of that,” she said, trying still to be calm.

“Of all the women I have hurt or destroyed, you are the noblest,” he went on, seeming not to have heard her.

She drew her breath in quickly, and stood mute, looking down, and some strong band that had been holding her down—how long she knew not, perhaps for years, perhaps for her whole life—loosened, and she felt herself growing upright. She was like the graceful silver birch that has been bowed over by the snow, flake after flake, till its head touches the ground, when the warm sun begins to melt its burden, and it lifts a little, and feels itself elastic.

In days when Honora Pembroke was his ideal, “noble” was the word he applied to her, and Annette Ferrier always felt herself grow small when she heard him utter it.

“Of all women I have ever known, you are the noblest and most lovely,” he said slowly. “I was blind. Too late I have learned that. And if I had a wish left, it would be that God would reunite us in heaven.”

The snows had melted, and she stood upright at last.

There was a confused whispering in her brain. Since she was loved and honored, why need they part? She could comfort him, be at his side always, and help him to win back peace, if not happiness. They would perform works of charity together, and in humbling herself she would raise him.

She lifted her eyes, and opened her lips to speak some such word, but checked herself on seeing him turn away. His face was no longer calm and sad, but full of anguish. All the enticements of human life had assailed his soul, and were fighting against its one stern tenant, remorse. Silently, and with a feeling of unacknowledged disappointment, she awaited the result, scarcely doubting that he would yield. When had he not yielded? was the bitter question that rose in spite of her, only to be thrust down again under many excuses, as she called to mind his sufferings and his isolation.

He stood near the window, with his face turned to the light, and she watched the struggle without daring to move or to speak. What silent clash of warring passion held him thus rigid she could only guess; what voices sweet and pitiful were pleading, and what voices stern and terrible replying, who can say? It did not need that angels of darkness should be there; the human heart was enough. In that swift review when the soul, anticipating a privilege of eternity, can compress a lifetime into a moment, what visions of all that life might give could have presented themselves!—dusky eves and sunlighted mornings, when the singing of birds, mingled with the prattle of children, and quiet and elegant leisure, and smiling friends, made earthly existence seem like an Elysian dream; ever‐ present affection, with its excuses for every fault, its recognition, prompt and inspiring, of every virtue, its cheering word for the hour of sadness, its loving check, its sympathy, its silent tenderness; the freedom of earth which wealth can give, every portal opening as if by magic, existence a perpetual feast. They crowded upon him mercilessly, and tossed to and fro his grief and remorse as the sea tosses its dead, that are now but faint white outlines, half lost in froth, now cold faces starting clearly out of the thin, green wave.

How many times that soul was lost and won in those few minutes none but the invisible witnesses of the scene could tell.

He moved at length, and Annette stepped nearer with sudden alarm, as she saw him put his hand into his bosom slowly, as if with dread to draw forth what was there. The hand closed on what it sought, and with bitter shrinking, as if it were his heart he was thus uprooting, brought it to light. It was no knife, nor pistol, nor vial of poison, as she had feared, but a folded paper. She had seen it in his hands before, and wondered what he kept with such care.

He opened it and read; and she, leaning nearer, read also, without stopping to consider her right.

This was the breviary Lawrence Gerald carried in his bosom, written largely and clearly, and signed with his name in full:

“I am a gambler, a housebreaker, a thief, a sacrilegious liar, a murderer, and a matricide.”

“O my love! stand firm! stand firm!” the wife tried to say; but the words died in a whisper on her lips, as her heart fainted with pain and delight.

He did stand firm without having heard her admonition. She saw the unsteady lips close again, the gazing eyes droop, the whole face and form compose itself. That brief reminder, written to be a visible witness when the voice of conscience should fail, was more potent than poison or blade or bullet.

“I wish to take a room by myself in another part of the city,” he said. “Are you willing?”

“Certainly!” she replied. “But I would like to know where it is. Not,” she added quickly, “that I would intrude or trouble you in any way. But you cannot expect me to lose all interest in you, and I shall feel better to know where you are, and to go once to see your room and the people you are with.”

“I will let you know as soon as I find a place,” he said. “Of course I wish to support myself, to be removed from all society, except those persons whom I must see, and to wait my time in penance. You understand it all, Annette. I no longer exist in the ordinary life of men. I am either in purgatory or in hell—I do not yet feel sure which.”

He was going away, but turned at a little distance, and looked at her once again. “My dear,” he said faintly, “good‐by!”

She could not utter a word, could only clasp her hands over her face, and so lose his last glance. For as he spoke that farewell, and as she heard his retreating step, the door of her sealed and frozen heart burst open, and her dead love, stirring uneasily in its grave during these last days, rose up stronger than ever before, and resumed the throne it was never again to abdicate. There, at last, was a man worth loving!

The next evening she received his new address; and he added: “I shall be out to‐morrow, and the _padrona_ will admit you, if you wish to come.”

Of course she went; but, what had not been to her a matter of course, the place pleased her. The house was in an old and crowded part of the city, where the streets swarmed with poor people; but the room was at the very top, in an odd corner quite removed from noise and communication with any other apartment, and had an eastern and a northern window that looked off over palace roofs and through towers and domes to the beautiful mountains. Close to its southern wall pressed a church tower, and on a level with its windows rose the sculptured façade, wreathed with angels. Once there, one might easily forget the steep, dark stair, the squalid street below, and even the bare walls and floor of the room itself.

Annette had not allowed herself to bring any article of comfort, still less of adornment, though her heart had ached with longing to do so. But she placed a beautiful crucifix on the one poor table, and left a volume of lives of saints beside it. A bunch of roses hung at her belt, and her fingers lingered on them in doubt for a moment. But she checked that impulse also. How much might roses breathe of woman’s presence there and all the graces and sweetnesses of life! But before leaving, she hung over an arm of the crucifix a single small bud, where the petals showed like a drop of blood oozing through the green.

As she was placing this last souvenir, her tears dropping over flowers and cross, there was a sound as though a hurricane should draw in its breath before blowing, the floor of the room trembled, then there came a tremendous and reverberating stroke. The great bell in the tower was striking the hour of noon, and the chamber shook as a bird’s nest shakes when a storm sweeps over the tree in which it is built. For the moment everything in the universe was obliterated but sound. She breathed its tremulous waves, she was enveloped and borne up by its strong tide; the very sunshine and the blue of the sky were like bright, resounding tones. Then the stroke ceased; and, circling round and round in fainting rings, the music of the bells went out to join the music of the spheres, perhaps to creep with a golden ripple up the shores of heaven.

The woman who had opened the door wondered much to see the pale _signora_ come down with a face flushed with weeping; but a liberal gift disposed her to think the best of everything.

“You must be very good to him, and not allow any one to intrude,” Annette said to her. “I shall come to the church here below every morning at seven o’clock; and if he should be ill, or any accident should happen to him, I wish you to come there and tell me. But you must not talk to him. Speak to him only when he asks you to.”

That evening she wrote to her mother: “Lawrence has left me, and is in the arms of God. That is all I can say, except that I trust he has won a perfect forgiveness.

“I am sorry, dear mamma, if you are lonely, but I cannot return to America. I do not wish for society anywhere. Here in Rome is my place, with my religion and the poor to occupy my time. Try to be happy, and to think of me as peaceful and contented. And, mamma, if there should be any good, honest man whom you would like to marry, I shall be glad of it. Goodness is the chief thing.”

Mrs. Ferrier wept profusely over this letter, not doubting that Lawrence was dead.

“The poor fellow!” she said. “After all, he wasn’t so bad as he might have been.”

And then, bethinking herself, she wiped away her tears, and calmed her grief as much as possible; for it would not do to render herself unpresentable. It was necessary to go at once with the news to F. Chevreuse.

The way that Mrs. Ferrier took to the priest’s house was a roundabout one; it led in an opposite direction, and stopped before a new dry‐goods store of the most glittering sort. There was, in fact, no shop in Crichton so fine or so much frequented as this. People went there at first from curiosity, and were disposed to make themselves very merry regarding it; but there seemed to be nothing to laugh at, unless it might be certain erroneous notions in their own minds. Everything was well ordered and business‐like, the clerks attentive and respectful, and the proprietor perfectly dignified and watchful. Indeed, a slight excess of dignity and watchfulness had at first marked his conduct, and made his customers wary of giving offence.

We have already intimated that Mrs. Ferrier had a new footman.

This functionary, a slim and sentimental young man, let down the step for his mistress; but before she had made her majestic descent, the proprietor of the shop stood in the door, bowing to his wealthy customer. She beckoned him out, and motioned the footman away out of hearing.

“Poor Lawrence is dead, John!” she said plaintively, a smile tempering her grief. “And it’s best so, of course. I’ve just got a letter from Annette. And, John—”

The lady paused, and looked down, and laughed a little.

“Well, what is it?” asked the new merchant with an appearance of curiosity.

“She’s willing.”

John’s face expressed two contrary emotions at this announcement—one of pleasure, the other a dogged sort of resentment that Annette’s willingness should have been considered of consequence.

“It is pleasanter to have everybody pleased,” the lady said soothingly. “Of course, though, it doesn’t make one bit of difference with me so far as what I shall do; for you know, John, I’d stand by you through thick and thin. Now I must go to F. Chevreuse.”

“There isn’t a more respectable‐looking merchant in the city of Crichton,” said Mrs. Ferrier emphatically to herself, as she drove away.

“Beg y’r pardon, mum?” said the slim footman, leaning over.

“I wasn’t talking to you!” exclaimed his mistress indignantly.

It was, indeed, observed by everybody that Mrs. Ferrier was very high with this unfortunate man, who was humility personified, and only too assiduous in his obedience. She had assumed a trifle more of state with all her servants; but the footman was scarcely allowed to breathe freely.

“I shouldn’t wonder, now, if he might think he could marry Annette,” she muttered to herself, as they drove on.

Poor fellow! his ambition did not soar beyond Betty, and she was treating him with cruelty. However, with a story‐teller’s prescience, we are fully aware that his trials are only the little waves which are sending him nearer and nearer to his haven, and that before the year is over the day will be named. Already in our mind’s eye we see the fair Betty in her bridal robes, with her magnificent and patronizing mistress fastening on the veil, and giving her a kind and resounding kiss at the same time. We even hear the small whisper with which she silences her bridegroom’s last jealous misgiving when he comments on the salute given her by the master of the house:

“What! you think that I could ever have had a fancy for him—a man who drops his h’s?”

The withering contempt of this remark was decisive.

But we are anticipating.

Mrs. Ferrier found the priest at home, and gave him the letter to read. He read it attentively, but came to a different conclusion from hers. He did not tell her so, though, for it was evident that Annette wished them to think that her husband was dead. Her former letters had prepared him to suspect a state of things very near the truth.

After a long conversation, in which F. Chevreuse perceived that his visitor was lingering and hesitating in an unusual manner, Mrs. Ferrier at last called his attention to the concluding sentences of the letter.

He read it a second time, glanced up through his spectacles at his visitor, read it again, and gave the letter back, quite uncomprehending. He was, doubtless, the only person in Crichton who could have been unconscious of her meaning.

“You may think me foolish, father, at my time of life, to be thinking of marrying again,” she said deprecatingly. “But you have no idea how lonely I am. Honora will soon have a house of her own, anybody can see that; Annette won’t come back, and Louis won’t live here, after what has happened. I have nothing to do but wander from room to room of my great house, and think how awfully lonesome I am, and almost wish that I had a little cabin that I could fill. I don’t feel as if I were in a house, but as if I were out somewhere. Many a time I’ve gone and sat in my chamber‐ closet, just to feel my elbows hit something.”

She paused, and F. Chevreuse said, “Yes!” as sympathizingly as he could, wondering greatly what was to come.

“John is a decent man, and my equal in everything but money,” she went on.

“Oh! it’s John!” F. Chevreuse exclaimed, light breaking in.

Mrs. Ferrier dropped her eyes and smiled.

“I don’t see any harm in it, if you have got your mind made up,” the priest said, recovering from his first astonishment. “I suppose it would be of no use for me to try to break off the arrangement, even if I wanted to.”

“Well, John is pretty set,” the lady admitted modestly.

“I dare say,” was the smiling rejoinder. “When is it to be?”

“In a month, if you please. He is started in business now, and is doing well, and there’s no reason why he shouldn’t be a great merchant as well as any other man. He’s capable of it, if anybody is,” she said, becoming a little defiant.

“Certainly!” replied F. Chevreuse with perfect gravity. “There is not a law in the commonwealth which will prevent his being as great a merchant as he pleases. The world of trade is open to John, and I wish him all success in it. Do you put your property into his hands?”

Instantly the beautiful modesty of the bride‐elect gave place to the business‐like acuteness of the woman who knew perfectly well the value of money.

“No, father, we keep our accounts separate,” she said. “He had half enough to start in business with, and I lent him the other half. The income of the whole is to go toward our housekeeping, but he will have nothing to do with the rest of my property.”

F. Chevreuse nodded. “I see that you haven’t lost your head. You have managed your own affairs so well thus far, you may as well continue to do the same, for your children’s sake.”

A month later there was a quiet marriage at the priest’s house; and the only notice the Crichtonians had of it was when John appeared again in Mrs. Ferrier’s carriage, this time by her side, instead of in the dicky.

Everybody smiled except Honora Pembroke. She alone, perfectly polite, and refraining from all interference, felt haughtily indignant at the marriage. It was in vain that F. Chevreuse tried to reason away her prejudices.

“I do not object because he was poor,” she said. “Riches are less a distinction than a difference. But he has been a servant, and that is irreparable.”

The priest began to hum a tune:

“Ah! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira!
Les aristocrats à la lanterne.”

Somewhat to his surprise, she blushed slightly, but did not smile.

“You may think me foolish, or even guilty of sinful pride,” she said with a certain stiffness; “but this is a feeling of which I cannot rid myself. I do not like to sit at table with a person who has once brought me my soup, nor on the same seat in the carriage with one who used to let down the step for me. Of course I recognize and submit to the situation; but I shall go to my own house again immediately.”

“Well!” said the priest, “it takes a good while to get acquainted with people. Here have I known you these ten years and more, have seen you simple, unpretending, humble, apparently, good to the poor, and going freely among them. I thought I knew you thoroughly; yet all at once I come upon the rock in that smooth stream. Have I ever caught a little gray shadow of it before, I wonder? Well, well! I won’t undertake to blast it out of the way at once. I am sorry, though, that you do not like John.”

“I like him in liveries,” said Miss Pembroke with dignity.

“I tell you,” persisted the priest, “they are going to be a very happy couple.”

“I haven’t a doubt of it,” she replied. “But that is no excuse.”

He laughed, and let her go. The haughty recoil of pride in the fibre was not to be reasoned away.

It was a clear afternoon in mid‐autumn; and when Miss Pembroke stepped from the priest’s door, she paused a minute on the sidewalk, and hesitated which way to go. She did not wish to return home, and she did not think of any other place where she would rather go.

And then, without looking, she was aware of a tall gentleman, who came down the street, and, still without looking, knew that he had crossed to her side of the street, and was approaching her. And then, with a perverseness which was scarcely natural to her, she turned quite coolly in the opposite direction, and walked from him, perhaps lest he might think that she wished for his company. Not but she and Mr. Schöninger were on the most friendly, and even cordial, terms—it was, indeed, taken for granted in Crichton that they were the best of friends—but—in short, she walked away from him. Perhaps she found his full and prosperous life a little discordant with her saddened one. She almost fancied sometimes that he had an air of triumphant pride, and that he was being spoiled by the adulation paid him on all sides.

She had been wishing lately that she could go to Annette; and, now that Gerald was dead, if the ambiguous letter they had received really meant that, perhaps Annette would like to have her. Miss Pembroke felt strangely lonely in her native town, where she knew everybody, and where she had not, certainly, to complain of any lack of attention. But she would be lonely for ever rather than Mr. Schöninger should think that she waited on F. Chevreuse’s step for him. He must have been at the end of the street when she came out, and—surely he would never dare to think that she saw him, and had been giving him time to overtake her!

Mr. Schöninger was meantime walking leisurely behind her quickening steps, intending to overtake her presently, but wishing first to watch her a little, and to think of some things. One was that he did not approve of her wearing black any longer. She was beautiful in anything, but too sad in this; and, besides, it interfered with certain plans of his. He made a slight reckoning, as nearly correct as the masculine mind could make it on such a subject. She might put on gray, or black and white, immediately. That would enable her to wear a rich purple in the winter. He liked to see her in purple. Some day, when she should be older, she must have a trailing robe of purple velvet with diamonds. Well, in the spring, then, she could change her deeper color for one of those delicate lavenders or lilacs that women know how to look pretty in; and then the way would be quite open for white, and rose, and blue, and all the fresh, gay colors a bride might wish to wear.

“We should be married by the first of May, at latest,” thought the gentleman very decidedly.

Miss Pembroke was quite right in fancying that there was something triumphant in Mr. Schöninger’s air; but she did not believe, and it was not true, her pettish charge that he was being spoiled by adulation. All was going well with him. Hosts of friends surrounded him—friends as sincere as any one can claim; he did not believe they would stand any great test, but, also, he did not believe that they were hypocrites. In his profession he was winning gold and reputation; and, what no one but himself knew as yet, the fortune for which he had vainly struggled so long was approaching him of itself. Two of those who had stood between it and him had died, and there remained now but a feeble old man. With his death all other claims would die. And not least in his cause of congratulation was his conviction that this fair woman, who walked before him with the black drapery fluttering back from her light foot, the braid of hair just showing its glossy bronze beneath the mourning veil, and, as she turned the corner of a street, the curve of her smooth cheek glowing like a peach, was his own.

What made her cheek so red now?

“Honora!” he said, quickening his pace.

She stopped with a start.

“Mr. Schöninger!”

“I beg your pardon!” he exclaimed, recollecting that he had never called her by her Christian name before. “I was thinking, and I forgot.”

She walked soberly by his side without asking what the subject of his thoughts had been. His exclamation may have revealed to her something of their nature; but she was far from suspecting that she was engaged, still less that her marriage‐day was fixed. She had, indeed, no reason to suppose that Mr. Schöninger had any intention of renewing the suit that she had once rejected.

“You are willing to take a walk?” he asked, and, when she nodded assent, added:

“Let us go up the Cocheco. Last night’s frost has added the finishing touch to the trees, and everybody is admiring them.”

A beautiful road, almost as wild as a country lane, led between the river‐ bank and the flowery cliffs beside it, and here at evening all the youths and maidens, and many of their elders in whom age had not chilled the love of nature, used to walk soberly in the soundless path, or climb the cliffs, or sit on the mossy rocks, or venture out on the rocks that studded the stream. Not a pleasant evening but found people strolling through this romantic avenue.

“Nowhere but in New England does nature dazzle, I think,” Mr. Schöninger said. “See this maple‐leaf! It is a fine scarlet, and as glossy as a gem, even when examined closely. And the elm‐leaf is as fine a gold. Everywhere else the autumn foliage is dingy when looked at so closely. The sky, too. Look at those long lines of fire that are beginning to stretch overhead, and at the gathering crimsons! In half an hour the heavens will be as brilliant as the earth. In Italy the colors are soft, like the colors in an old painting; they have great depth and richness, but they lack the fresh brilliancy of the skies in the New World. You must go to Italy soon, Honora.”

This time the name was used without an apology.

“I have been thinking of it,” she replied quietly, and began to feel as a stranded seaweed may when, after having lain awhile painfully on the dry sand, it finds the bright sea slipping under it, and lifting it from its hard resting‐place. Without a word of explanation she found herself claimed and cared for.

“I wish to go there again as a Catholic,” he continued, “and see with the eyes of faith what I saw before with the eyes of an artist. I shall always admire most the Catholicism of America, or what the Catholicism of America is going to be. It is more intelligent, noble, and reverent. It isn’t a sort of devotion that expresses itself in tawdry paper flowers. Indeed, I believe that America is destined to show the world a Catholicism morally more grand than any it has yet seen—a worship of the heart and the intellect, where children shall be delighted, and yet common sense find nothing to regret. Still, Rome is the sacred city of the martyrs, the popes, and the temples. I think we should go there in two years at latest.”

He had spoken earnestly, and had absolutely forgotten how much remained unsaid, so sure was he of her.

Honora’s glance of astonishment and incredulity reminded him. He bent a little nearer, smiling, and said softly: “But we shall be married long before that time, dear, shall we not?”

“It is the first I have heard of it,” Miss Pembroke managed to say with a certain degree of composure, after a moment.

“You surely are not vexed!” he said quickly, beginning to fear that he had assumed too much. “I asked you once in the proper, lover‐like fashion, and you refused me, not because you were indifferent to me—you never said that—but because you would not marry and would not love one who denied your Saviour. That obstacle no longer exists. You did not imagine that I had become indifferent to you? That is out of the question. Have I made a mistake?”

“No; it is I who have made a mistake,” she answered frankly. “I was afraid that you had given me up.” She hesitated a little, then, since he still listened, added: “I am very glad that you have not.”

“Thank you!” he said.

They walked slowly up the road between the foaming river and the glowing cliffs, praising the skies and the trees as they went, finding everything beautiful, finding each the other more beautiful than all else. And when the evening began to fade a little, they turned their steps, and went down again with the river, filled with that deep and quiet happiness which leaves nothing to wish for and nothing to tell.

The very next morning a little note was sped from Miss Pembroke to Sister Cecilia with the following mysterious announcement:

“My _Novena_ has succeeded perfectly! I will come very soon and tell you all about it.”

Since the matter is settled, we may as well own at once that when Mr. Schöninger first announced himself a Catholic, Honora had said to her friend and confidant at the convent, “If I do not marry him, I shall never marry any one”; and that the result of this confession was a _Novena_, in which the young woman had asked that she might find favor in his sight.

“I told him about the _Novena_,” Miss Pembroke said when she made her explanatory visit to the convent. “And I told him that you and all the Sisters joined with me; and he bade me thank you for his part, and say that he hoped you would never be sorry for having done so.”

But Honora did not tell how astonished and touched her lover had been at this confession of what seemed to her the most simple thing in the world.

“I never thought of asking God for you,” he said; “and yet there is nothing in the world so well worth praying for. I am a very ignorant Catholic, Honora, in all except doctrine. You will have much to teach me. But, then,” he added, smiling, “we have all our lives for that.”

“The only blot on my happiness,” Honora said to her friends, “is the thought of Annette. A letter came from her last night which seems to shut us all out from giving her either society or comfort. She evidently does not wish to see any one she has ever known. She says that her time and thoughts are entirely occupied.”

Annette Gerald was fully occupied. She was like one who stands at the head of a long flight of winding stairs, watching another descend, and, beginning to lose sight of the object of her attention, begins to follow slowly, intent, at the same time, not to be too near or too far away.

It was necessary that she should keep Lawrence Gerald in sight without attracting attention either to him or to herself. As a rich lady, driving in her own carriage, she could not do this. She therefore gave up her carriage, and moved to an humbler apartment, where she lived with one servant. Still, the dainty elegance of the widow’s attire she had assumed, fastidious in her choice, not consciously, but from habit, pointed her out as of a different class from the people she went most among. To remedy this, it was necessary only to be passive; and in a few months Roman dust and mud and brambles had reduced her to a dinginess almost Roman, and she could go unremarked, could see Lawrence about his work, digging in the excavations, carrying stone and mortar for the masons, doing any rough labor that offered. She could see him in the church, where he spent an hour every morning; she knew that every Sunday he entered the same confessional, and, as she could well guess, told the same tale to the priest, who, when his penitent left him, leaned forward and looked after him with a sad and earnest gaze. More than once, late in the evening, she had looked up from the street where her close carriage stood waiting, and seen, out on the corner of the open roof, to which no one but he had access, his form drawn clearly against the transparent purple of the sky, and, after waiting as long as prudence would allow, had gone away to her lonely apartment, leaving him there in company of the marble angels that clustered about the church front, and the blessed bells, and whatever invisible spirits God should will and his own soul invoke. Never did she see a light in that lofty window; and, after a while, it occurred to her to ask the reason of the _padrona_, who often came to the church in the hope of receiving money from the lady.

“He never will have a candle,” the woman said. “I think he is very poor. And he never drinks wine or eats meat. And, _signora_, he is growing very pale.”

That night Annette Gerald extinguished the candles in her own apartment, and never lighted them again. She could weep and pray without light. The next day she dismissed her one servant, and thenceforward waited on herself. No ease or elegance must her life know while his was passed in such poverty. He ate the dry, sour bread of the poor; she ate it too. He discarded every luxury of the table; she also became an ascetic. If she put wine or fruit to her lips, tears choked her, and she set them aside. As he went down, so she followed him, unseen, weeping pitifully, watching constantly, loving utterly.

Without suspecting it, both became after a while objects of interest to those about them. No dinginess or apparent poverty could hide their refinement; and the extraordinary piety of both invested them with a certain sacredness in the eyes of these people, who had walked and talked with saints. The rude workmen ceased, not only to jest with, but to jest in the presence of this man who never smiled, or spoke without necessity, whose pale face was for ever downcast, and who, in the midst of Italian indelicacy, carried himself with the refinement of an angel. In the long noon rest of the hot summer days they withdrew from the place where he threw himself down, faint with fatigue and the heat, and left him to that solitude he unmistakably desired. Only little children ventured near the “penitent,” as he began to be called, and smiled wistfully in his face, and kissed the hand that now and then gave them a _soldo_.

Once, as he lay asleep on the grass, in the shadow of a ruined arch, an artist, who was just returning home from a morning’s sketching in the Campagna, paused to look at him. The other workmen lounged about at a distance, some asleep, some eating their noon luncheon of dry bread, others smoking and talking. This one seemed laid there apart for a picture. Thrown carelessly on his back, with his hand under the cheek turned a little aside, and the hat dropped off, his form and face were fully seen. It was not the form and face of a plebeian. The elegant shape was not disguised by its faded garments; the beauty of the face, delicately flushed with heat, and beaded with perspiration, was even enhanced by the unshorn and untended beard and the confused mass of clustering hair; and the expression of calm melancholy, which was not obliterated even by the unconsciousness of sleep, did not belong to a common nature.

The artist drew softly nearer, and opened his portfolio, too much engaged to give more than a passing glance to a woman who stood by the arch. With a rapid pencil he sketched his subject, trying to catch that hovering sadness and the weary bend of the head.

Drawing back presently to see if he could add anything to his sketch, he perceived that the woman who had been standing by the arch was at his side, watching his progress.

“Don’t let the shadow run off so,” she said, looking at the sketch, not at him. “Show how the sunshine comes, close to his feet, so that he has only a step to take to reach it. And do you see how those yellow flowers lean against his hair in the form of a crown? Put them in too; and the group of workmen yonder, and a corner of the excavation, with that beautiful pedestal half uncovered. As you have it, it is only a pretty poem without meaning; give the whole, and it will be a tragical story.”

The artist looked intently at the lady while she spoke. Surely she must be the sister of the sleeper! Their two faces would do to stamp on a coin, the man’s profile showing beyond the woman’s.

“Finish the sketch quickly before he wakes,” she said. “I will pay you whatever you want for it. Some day I will have you paint it. Don’t forget the red poppies at his feet. And can you see, can you show, that there is a blister on his hand?”

Wondering much at this strange sort of poor people whom he found himself among, the artist obeyed.

“But I want to keep the sketch,” he said. “I will make a copy for you, if you will come to my studio for it.”

“Certainly not!” she exclaimed, and for the first time looked at him with a clear and haughty gaze. “You have no right to keep it, for you took it without permission. It would be dishonorable and intrusive of you to show that to any person. We are not _contadini_!”

The artist rose and bowed.

“Madam, allow me to present my sketch to you,” he said with equal pride.

“Some day you will know, and then you will no longer be offended,” she said calmly, and took the sketch from his hand just as the sleeper stirred and began to awake. “And now, I beg you never to notice him again, or mention him to any one till I come to you for the picture.”

And so three years passed away, and there came an Easter morning such as Easters used to be in the days when the pope was King of Rome, and there was one city in the world where the business was religion.

Who can forget the scene, having once beheld it—the sky built up of sapphires, glitter on glitter of such blue as the queen of heaven might make her mantle of; the full, warm gold of the sunshine looking the sad ruins in the face till they smile, and revealing its hidden rainbows now and then, as the foamy columns of fountains sway in the light breeze, and catch it unawares; the birds, with long, pointed wings, that cut the air, and seem inebriated with the delight of flying. Then the crowd in the piazza of S. Peter’s, the millennial mingling of rich and poor, royal and plebeian, making in all a scene to be witnessed nowhere else.

“How familiar, yet how new!” said a lady who stepped from her carriage at the barrier. “It is all I could wish! I am glad, Max, that we did not come sooner to Rome. I would rather my first sight of it should be a festal one.”

This lady was richly dressed, and the black lace of her large Spanish veil was drawn back from a face like a fresh lily.

She was instantly addressed as _principessa_ by all the beggars about.

“I am sorry I cannot give you the title, Honora,” her husband said, and smilingly dropped a coin into each outstretched hand. “So nothing disappoints you? I thought it would be so. Now, we must not linger outside.”

“Let us go slowly up; and please do not speak to me,” Mrs. Schöninger said. “No, I do not want your arm now. I must enter S. Peter’s the first time praying.”

They went slowly up the ascent, Honora with her hands clasped, and her eyes dilating as they entered the grand vestibule. Then Mr. Schöninger lifted the heavy curtain, and she crossed the threshold.

At that first step into S. Peter’s a Catholic feels as though he had touched the beating heart of mother church.

The crowd pressed in; but still another crowd remained outside, keeping their places for the papal benediction, and listening for the silvery burst of trumpets inside which should tell that the risen God stood on the central altar of Christendom.

Among this crowd was a group, for which they made way, as it crossed the piazza and approached the steps. Yet it was only two poor laborers who supported a sick man between them.

The thin and transparent face of this invalid, bathed now in the perspiration of weakness, showed that he was worn by consumption or by a long and exhausting fever. He was so weak, indeed, that his two assistants supported him in their arms; and when they reached the stone posts at the foot of the steps, he knelt there, and leaned against one of them, almost insensible.

A lady, following closely behind, wet her handkerchief in cologne‐water, and handed it over his shoulder to one of the men, but did not herself speak to them. He revived a little at that, and, still leaning against the central post, remained fixed in prayer.

A whisper began to creep among the poor people about. Some of them had seen this man, and knew what they conceived to be his story, and they told it in intervals of listening to the strains of heavenly music faintly heard now and then from the church.