The Catholic World, Vol. 25, April 1877 to September 1877

by Various

MILLICENT.

I.

About two years ago we were sitting in our sunny salon in the Avenue Gabrielle, my mother and I, she reading, I at my harp, when Tomlins, our English maid, opened the door, her face all alight with suppressed laughter.

“Well, Tomlins?” said my mother.

“Please, ma’am, it were such a joke!” said Tomlins. “I was a-comin’ past the porter’s lodge when I 'eard a gentleman trying that 'ard to explain himself, and he 'adn’t 'alf a dozen words o’ French, he 'adn’t; and the concierge he could make neither 'ead nor tail of what he was wanting to say; and it was that funny I couldn’t for the life of me but burst out a-laughin’!”

“That was a shame! You should have gone to the gentleman’s assistance, instead of laughing at him,” said my mother reprovingly; “he would have done so had he seen you in a difficulty.”

“I think he was Hamerican, ma’am,” said Tomlins, in a tone which clearly indicated that she thought this fact an extenuating circumstance of her misbehavior.

“That makes no difference,” said my mother; “you know enough of French, such as it is, to have been useful to him, and you should have come forward. But how do you know he was an American?”

“He wore a white 'at, ma’am, and that’s what Henglish gentlemen don’t use to, leastways not this time of year. He be the family that has took the flat down-stairs for the winter.”

“Oh! he is a neighbor, then!” remarked my mother; and, turning to me, she added: “Perhaps I ought to go down and see if we can be of any use to them?”

“Indeed, mamma,” I replied hastily, “you will do nothing of the sort! We have had enough of American acquaintances. These are most likely enormously rich people, whose neighborhood, if we knew them, would be nothing but a bore.”

“We have known some very rich ones who were exceedingly pleasant,” urged my mother.

“Yes, and that is why I have registered a vow never to know another—not if I can help it, at least,” I replied. “Just as you have grown to care for them they sail away across the Atlantic, and you never see them again! No, please, let us have nothing to do with these people down-stairs! They may be perfectly charming, and, if they are, all the more reason for keeping clear of them.”

“This is all very selfish and not at all like you,” persisted my mother. “These people are at our door, strangers, and at the mercy of the concierge, who will fleece them and worry them till they are driven wild; it is a real act of charity to come to their rescue. I will send Tomlins down with my card.”

I gave up the contest. I knew that, when there was an act of kindness to be done, it was no use trying to oppose my mother, especially on such selfish grounds as my present ones. The card was sent accordingly with a message, and about ten minutes later up came the whole tribe—Dr. Segrave, Mrs. Segrave, and Miss Sybil Segrave. They were simply beside themselves with gratitude. Their delight on discovering that there was a deliverer at hand, under the same roof with them, was quite affecting. How they ever found the courage to come and face the situation at all, with such a lively horror of its consequences, was a matter of great surprise to us. Miss Segrave spoke French fluently, but this accomplishment apparently was reserved solely for ornamental purposes; her disconsolate parents had evidently not thought of pressing it into such vulgar service as parleying with the concierge and the cook—two domestic enemies before whom they had already learned to shake in their shoes.

There was something about the three that smote my heart at once. There was a freshness, a frankness, a spontaneous trustfulness that it was difficult to resist. I made a stand for it, nevertheless, and was as coldly unresponsive to their exuberant warmth of manner as was consistent with politeness. The doctor, however, took me by storm, and in one minute and a half I had capitulated.

He was only doctor by courtesy; he had taken every degree that could be taken, but he had only practised as an amateur, being, as my prophetic soul had warned me, “enormously rich.” He was about fifty-five years of age, tall, slim, dark, but he had a quizzical expression of face, a twinkle in his eye, and a spring in his manner that made you forget he was not a boy.

Mrs. Segrave was a complete contrast to him. Middle-sized, stout, and unfashionable in appearance, she had the gentleness and the kindliness of half a dozen mothers rolled up into one; her voice was low, her manner simple almost to homeliness, but full of that easy self-possession that stamped her at once as a lady—a most winning woman.

Sybil—O Sybil! How shall I describe her? She was not a beauty, and yet she made the effect of being one. There was a brilliancy about her that is indescribable; it lighted up the room the moment she entered. Pull her to pieces, and she was nothing; take her as a whole, and she dazzled you. Her features were irregular, her complexion was nothing particular, but there was a sparkle, a glow, a grace about her altogether that were more striking than the loveliest coloring or the most perfect symmetry. I can see her now as she appeared to me that first day, standing on her high heels, a little behind the doctor and Mrs. Segrave, her black eyes glancing right and left like flashes of lightning, her scarlet feather, set like a flame in her black velvet hat, illuminating her olive skin, and her gold-brown silk dress glistening like a separate patch of sunshine in the sunlit room. A most picturesque creature she looked. I longed to hear her speak. No one was kept long waiting for this in Sybil’s presence.

“This is the very kindest thing I ever heard of!” said Mrs. Segrave, holding out her fat little hand to my mother.

“You have saved a family man from suicide, my dear madam!” said the doctor in the heartiest tone.

“Father!” protested Sybil, “there you are making such a character for us! Mrs. Wallace will set us down as a family of mad Americans. I assure you, Mrs. Wallace, we are all perfectly in our right minds, and very grateful to you.”

This sortie broke the ice into splinters. We all laughed, shook hands, and sat down, and the doctor began forthwith to pour out his troubles. Their name was legion. He had not been twenty-four hours in the house, and the concierge had already driven him to the verge of insanity.

“If I could speak to the rascal, I’d be a match for him, and soon make him know I would stand no nonsense,” he went on to explain. “But that’s where he has me on the hip, as Shakspere says; he keeps jabbering on, and I can’t answer the fellow. I know what he’s driving at, I know he’s robbing me; but what aggravates me most is that he thinks he’s fooling me.”

My mother poured all the oil she could on these angry waters, and in ten minutes I could see that she and the doctor were sworn friends.

Sybil listened so far to the conversation with an air of amused interest, just as I was doing; then abruptly turning from it, as if she had had enough of the subject, “You are a musician, I see,” she said—my harp and piano stood open ready for action. “I am perfectly devoted to music! I will come up and play duets with you, if you let me?” I said I should be delighted.

“But I like talking ten thousand times better than music,” she went on. “Music is a way of expressing one’s self with another instrument than one’s tongue; but one tires of it after a while. One never tires of talking; I never do.”

I could readily believe this, but assented as to a general proposition.

“Do you read a great deal?” she continued. “I don’t. I find life is too absorbing, too full; one has no time left for reading. Have you? Human beings are the books I enjoy most. I am so intensely interested in my fellow-creatures! I like to study them, to turn them inside out, to analyze their characters, to exchange views with them. I do so enjoy discussing life. Don’t you?”

This time she did “pause for a reply,” and I was able to make one. It was not very satisfactory.

“No, really! You don’t care for discussing life! Well, I am surprised at that. Dangerous! What a funny idea! But if it were, that would only make it ten times more interesting to me; there is such an excitement in danger! If I had been a man I should have been passionately devoted to tiger-hunting. Now, life is a kind of tiger-hunt, when one comes to think of it; one can always get some excitement out of it—watching other people at the hunt, I mean. Don’t you think so? People take such different views of life. Good gracious! one would never get to the end of one’s friends’ views, if one began, even on one particular subject. Take love and marriage, for instance; what can be more intensely interesting than to discuss marriage with a person who holds views diametrically opposite to one’s own?”

She rattled on in this way for half an hour: it was very amusing. I felt very tame beside her, and I fancied she must have found me insufferably dull and unsympathetic. I found out afterwards that I was mistaken in this; her estimate had been very flattering. On reflection it need not have surprised me; there is nothing a great talker likes so much as a good listener.

We all parted most cordially, with mutual congratulations on the chance that had brought us together.

“I feel as bold as a lion,” said the doctor as he shook hands with my mother. “I am ready to brave an army of concierges.”

“Oh! keep the peace; keep friends with him at any cost. If you make him your enemy, he will worry your life out,” was her parting injunction.

“Well,” she said, when the door had closed on our new acquaintances, “what do you think of them?”

“I think them perfectly odious!” I replied.

“My dear Lilly!”

“Yes. They are just the kind of people we are sure to get fond of, to make a friendship with, and then away they will fly, and we shall never hear or see them for the rest of our lives.”

“You are determined to make a tragedy out of it, so I will not contradict you,” said my mother. “Meantime, I shall enjoy the pleasant neighborhood, and trust to its not ending so badly. They are here for six months certain, and if they like it, and the countess likes to renew their lease, they may remain for six months more. They intend to make themselves very comfortable, meantime, and to receive a good deal.”

“Humph! They will be sending us invitations to their entertainments, I suppose,” I said.

“That is very likely.”

“They will have their share in their thanks, as far as I am concerned,” I said; and I sat down to my harp again. “I have no fancy to go and figure as a housemaid amongst their magnificent American toilettes.”

“I am vain enough to flatter myself that my child would look like a gentlewoman, whatever her surroundings might be,” observed my mother quietly, “and that she does not depend on dress for her individuality.”

What else could I do but jump up and kiss her for this speech, and declare myself ready to go and sport my white muslin and pink ribbons in the midst of all the latest wonders of Worth & Company?

It was not many days before I had an opportunity of putting this heroic resolve into execution.

You may laugh; but it was heroic. I realized this distinctly, even before the supreme crisis of the eventful evening came. Sybil herself came up with the card of invitation.

“Mamma was putting it into an envelope to send it by Pierre,” she said; “but I said that was the veriest nonsense, and that I would take it myself. Of course you are disengaged? You must be disengaged!”

“Unfortunately, we are,” I replied.

“Why, Lilly Wallace, what do you mean!” screamed Sybil.

“Just this: that I am a trifle proud, and just vain enough not to care to look a guy wherever I go, and that I am pretty sure to look that at your house on the 22d. You will all be dressed to kill, as you say—rigged out in the very newest fashions by the most expensive dressmakers in Paris—and I shall have to appear like a school-girl in plain white muslin. I never wear anything else; mamma can’t afford it. I shall have a new one, and she will give me a handsome sash and fresh flowers; but that is all. She will appear herself in plain black velvet, without either old point or diamonds. If you think we will make too hideous a blot on your splendor, say so honestly, and we will spare you the disgrace.”

“Lilly, you are the very oddest girl I ever came across in the whole course of my life!” protested Sybil. “Why, how can you talk so? You will look perfectly lovely in your sheer white muslin. I only wish we Americans were not such fools as to spend all our money on our backs as we do; I can tell you most of us hate it and think it awfully hard to have to do it. But we can’t help it; we should get so laughed at if we went to a ball in white muslin that we should die of shame.”

“Well, that’s a pleasant lookout for me!” I remarked.

“Oh! it’s quite a different thing with you,” Sybil declared, and with a warmth I felt was sincere; indeed, I felt she was sincere all through. “You are English, and we know perfectly well you have a different standard in those things.”

“And my mother?” I said. “What sort of effect is she likely to produce in her plain black velvet?”

“She will look like a queen—that’s all; you know she will, Lilly.”

I did know it; I had known it as long as I could remember. I had been brought up by my mother in a black velvet dress, and believed, nay, knew, that she looked as beautiful and queenlike in it as if its soft and sombre simplicity had been embroidered in gems and beflowered by all the Worths in Christendom.

I confess, nevertheless—and I do so with shame—that I felt mortified at her having to present herself in this splendid gathering of Transatlantic rank and fashion in the attire which had borne her triumphantly through many a stately Parisian crowd. I was really dazzled by the splendor of the dresses when we stood in the midst of them. There was no distinguishing the young from the old, the maid from the matron; silks, satins, laces, jewels glistened indiscriminately on all. There was a great deal of beauty amongst the women—there is sure to be in an American assembly; but the richness of their dresses surpassed anything I ever beheld. In a French salon you may expect to meet a great deal of elegance—some dresses that stand out from the common level of taste and becomingness by their more brilliant hues and elaborate trimmings; but here all were brilliant, all were elaborate, all were magnificent. I really did feel an anachronism as I stood there in my innocent, fluttering muslin, while these superb, many-colored birds-of-paradise floated and rustled all round me, sweeping the dark carpet with miles of silk, and satin, and velvet, and lace of every hue in the rainbow. It was like being shut up in a kaleidoscope; the pattern shifted, flashing into new forms before my eyes at every turn, until I felt fairly bewildered by the moving glory. What kind of conversation could go on under external conditions like these? How were people, women at any rate, to collect their thoughts to converse on any possible subject except the one that was under their eyes, brought before them in such victorious, fascinating guise? If they were not talking of dress, their own dress, their friend’s dress, dress in general or in particular, they were most assuredly thinking of it. And small blame to them. I know I, for one, could think of nothing else.

Nothing could exceed the courtesy of our hosts. They led up guest after guest to introduce to us; all the magnates were presented to my mother, all the young ladies to me. They were very gracious, every one of them, but we did not get on well after the first exchange of commonplaces. How could we? What interest could a white-muslin creature like poor me have in the eyes of these sumptuously-attired young ladies? I said simply nothing to them, I suggested nothing; I was a blank. Sybil never sat down for a moment. She was untiring in her efforts to make everybody happy and pleasant and at home. She kept flitting about from room to room, bringing young gentlemen up to young ladies, seeing that no one was overlooked, that congenial elements were drawn together, that antagonistic ones were kept asunder. There probably were some antagonistic ones, though they were invisible beneath the gay, harmonious surface—that pale, stately-looking girl, for instance, whom I had noticed sitting apart beside a large console that separated her from the gaudy group standing close by. I knew she was a great friend of Sybil’s, because I had seen her photograph in a dainty gilt frame in the place of honor on her writing-table. I saw Sybil making a dart to her side every now and then, and interchanging a few hurried words in a tone of close confidence; and yet she took no pains to bring her forward or to introduce people to her. There was something peculiar about the girl’s air and countenance that drew my attention and made me wish to speak to her. I seized the first opportunity to whisper this wish to Sybil.

“The pale girl in the corner? Whoever do you mean? Oh! Millicent Gray. Yes, by and by. I don’t think you would care much to talk to her; I mean I don’t think you and she would hit it off very well,” said Sybil in a hesitating way; and somehow it was borne upon me that she thought exactly the contrary; that we should hit it off too well, and that she preferred, for reasons of her own, not to bring us together. I there and then resolved that I would make Millicent Gray’s acquaintance before I left the room—or die.

Did Sybil see this in my face, I wonder? She had a way of flashing a look at you with her round black eyes that suggested a power of reading you through and through which was sometimes uncomfortable. I felt it so now, and, trying to assume an air of supreme indifference, I observed, looking in another direction:

“Then never mind. I only fancied talking to her because no one else has been doing so; she looked lonely.”

Sybil’s rose-colored skirts floated away in the direction of Millicent Gray, and for a moment I half-expected she was going to bring her up to me. I was mistaken; she bent over her friend, and began talking in animated tones, gesticulating with her fan in an excited manner. Millicent listened apparently with more surprise than approval; there was a faint expression of sarcastic resentment on her pale, thoughtful face, and an imperceptible movement of her shoulders seemed to shrug away some remark of Sybil’s with smiling dissent; as she did so, her eyes turned towards me and our glances met. There was a mute recognition in them which we both felt. I blushed, feeling rather guilty for watching her so closely; she smiled, and, in spite of myself, I obeyed a law of nature and smiled too. The rooms were now so full that it was difficult to move about; there was small chance of the crowd swaying me across towards Millicent, and she sat on, surveying the scene from her nook with a face that was more expressive of quiet observation than enjoyment. She was dressed in white silk, with waves of tulle flowing over it, but without further ornament—neither ribbons nor flowers; she wore one large crimson rose in her hair, a long trainée of leaves dropping down from it and entangling a rich curl of her dark hair. The relative simplicity of the dress singled her out as a very remote cousin to my white muslin, and I felt more than ever convinced we should prove sympathetic to each other. How was I to make good my vow to speak to her or die? The chances were that I should die, for just at this moment Sybil bore down on me from the rear, and took me in tow through the billows of silks and lace into her own boudoir, which was two rooms off from the central salon where my pensive heroine abided.

“Are you having a good time of it, Lilly?” she inquired, darting her bright black eyes through me, when we came to a little breathing space. “What do you think of our American society? Are our women as handsome as yours? Are our young men as agreeable?”

“Four questions in one breath!” I cried, pretending to gasp. “Let me answer the first—the only one I can meet on such short notice: I am having a capital time of it. You are the best hosts I ever saw, all three of you. But, Sybil, do introduce me to that girl in white silk.”

“No, I won’t,” said Sybil. “You must want some refreshment. I don’t believe you’ve taken so much as an ice; I’ve seen you let the trays pass a dozen times untouched. Come into the supper-room and have something. Stay,” and she bent close to me and went on in a whisper: “I will make Mr. Halsted take you in. You see that young man with the fuchsia in his buttonhole? He is perfectly charming. I have had such a delightful talk with him just now!”

“About what?”

“Good gracious! About everything.”

“You have been discussing life with him?”

“Precisely.”

“And what has come of it? Has he proposed, or is he only hovering on the brink, poor wretch?”

“How absurd you are, Lilly, with your English ideas!” cried Sybil, still in a sotto voce, although the music drowned everybody’s voice. “You won’t understand that one may discuss life with a young man without meaning any harm!”

“Harm? To his heart, do you mean?”

“Or to one’s own.”

“Have you got one, Sybil?” I asked quite seriously.

“Yes, I have, and a very sensitive one too, let me tell you,” she said in her vehemently emphatic way. “Mr. Halsted, will you take my friend to have some refreshment? Mr. Halsted—Miss Wallace.”

And off I went with this perfectly charming young man.

The first person I met in the supper-room was my mother, whom the doctor had just taken in and was plying with some delicious nectar of an American drink.

“My dear, I was beginning to wonder what had become of you,” she said. “It is growing rather late, is it not?”

The doctor protested, but we made good the opportunity as soon as his hospitable back was turned, and disappeared from the brilliant scene.

And Millicent Gray? I was of course in honor bound to die, as I had not spoken to her; but I thought it better to live, and try and make good my resolution in some other way. Chance favored me unexpectedly. A few days after the magnificent reception on the first floor I went down to discuss life quietly with Sybil for half an hour, when the servant said she had been obliged to run out for a few minutes to her aunt’s, next door, but that she would be back presently, and had begged I would go in and wait for her.

I had not been many minutes in the salon when the doctor came in. He had been “down town” to Galignani’s, and had gleaned all the news that was abroad, what steamers were signalled, which had come in, which had sailed, and who had come in by the last arrival. The doctor was a terrible flirt. He sat down on the sofa beside me, and began to repeat verses from Tommy Moore about my “bright eyes that were his heart’s undoing,” and I know not what besides. Mrs. Segrave heard us laughing, and came in to see what it was all about.

“Ah! my dear,” she said, “he whispered those very same verses to me five-and-twenty years ago. Don’t believe him; he’s a gay deceiver. Charles dear, did you ask Mrs. Wallace what we were going to do about this claim the concierge is making of twenty francs a month extra for bringing up our letters?”

“No, I did not,” said the doctor. “In fact, I had not time yet; but I dare say Miss Lilly can tell us just as well!”

“Oh! if it’s anything about the concierge you had much better appeal to mamma,” I said to Mrs. Segrave. “She is at home now, and if you go up you will find her alone.”

“I see how it is: you want to get me out of the way!” said Mrs. Segrave. “You want to hear what more Charles has to say about your bright eyes. Well, well, I’ll go; I’ll not be a spoil-sport.”

She was going to open the door when Pierre opened it, and in walked—Millicent Gray. After the usual greetings Mrs. Segrave said, turning to me:

“You know Sybil’s friend, Miss Gray, of course? No! I was sure you had met. Then let me introduce you—”

As soon as we had got “well into conversation,” the doctor proposed that he and Mrs. Segrave should leave us young ladies together, and go up to consult my mother about this new imposition of the concierge.

When Millicent and I found ourselves alone there was an awkward pause for a moment; we felt as conscious as a pair of lovers thrown together for the first time. At last we looked at each other and began to laugh.

“I am so pleased to meet you,” I said.

“Not so much pleased as I am,” she replied. “I have been entreating Sybil to make me acquainted with you, and she would not. We came near quarrelling over you the other evening.”

“So did she and I! What could have been her motive?” I said.

“Did she not tell you?”

“No.”

“And you don’t guess?”

“No! Pray tell me, if it is not a secret,” I said.

“Oh! no, it’s no secret,” replied Millicent, laughing. “You are a Catholic. She was afraid to let me know you.”

“Lest I should contaminate you!”

“Lest you should convert me.”

I was silent from sheer surprise.

“You see what a dangerous person she thinks you!” said Millicent, laughing.

“I don’t see why she should,” I replied, rather nettled. “I never tried to convert her.”

“Perhaps because you felt it was a hopeless case,” said Millicent, who could not apparently see the thing in a serious light; for she was laughing still, and looked altogether highly amused.

“I don’t know whether I felt about it one way or the other,” I said. “I am utterly bewildered that Sybil should have laid hold of the idea of my being so dangerous in that line; from the moment I discovered what her notions on religion were I avoided even touching on the subject directly or indirectly, and yet she looks upon me as a lion or a fox going about and seeking whom I may devour!”

“No, no; you must not think that,” protested Millicent. “She looks upon you as dangerous, but in quite another sense from proselytizing. She suspects me—very unjustly, I assure you—of having what she calls Roman Catholic proclivities; and when I expressed a wish to know you—she raves about you in the most enthusiastic way—she said nothing would induce her to make us acquainted; that you were just the kind of person to whisk me into the Catholic Church before I knew where I was.”

There was something at once so absurd and so thoroughly characteristic of Sybil in this remark that, in spite of myself, I burst out laughing.

“I promise solemnly,” I said, “that I will not whisk you in without giving you due warning, and, moreover, having your full and free consent to the operation beforehand.”

“Thank you. That is generous,” said Millicent; “and to prove my sense of it I solemnly promise not to whisk you into my church without having your full and free consent beforehand.”

“Yes, by the bye,” I said, “it never seems to have occurred to Sybil that the danger might be mutual; that I ran a risk as well as you by our becoming acquainted?”

Millicent was hesitating in her answer when we heard a loud ring at the door, and in an instant Sybil burst into the room. She stood for an instant looking at us, and then cried out in her ringing tones:

“Well, is it all over with you? Has she done it?”

“Done what?” I said. “Miss Gray has not attempted to do anything except to make herself exceedingly agreeable.”

Sybil laughed merrily.

“I call that exceedingly smart—quite worthy of a Yankee!” she cried. “By the way, it puts the thing in a new light. Milly, turn on the guns and try and convert her.” And she pointed to me with her chinchilla muff. “That would be a feather in one’s cap! Good gracious!”

“Then why should you not try for it yourself?” I inquired. “Sybil, I am inclined to be very angry with you for making me such a reputation. You know perfectly well I have never had a word of controversy with you since we have known each other; never done the least thing to try and make a Catholic of you. You know I have not!”

“I know nothing of the sort,” protested Sybil. “I know this: that you and your mother are the very most dangerous pair of Catholics I have ever met—just the kind of Catholics to knock one’s prejudices on the head with one blow.” And she banged the table with her pretty little muff. “You never preach, either of you, or talk controversy, or do any mortal thing to put one on one’s guard; but you do every conceivable thing to make one fall in love with your religion: you are the very milk of human kindness, you never speak ill of any one, you are always ready to help people, you spend your time going after the poor, nursing the sick, and heaven knows what besides; for you are up at cock-crow, and out by candlelight saying your prayers, when we are fast asleep in our beds. Milly Gray, now mark my words”—and she faced round and confronted Millicent with uplifted muff, in a Sibylline attitude of warning—“mark my words: this is none of my doing, and whatever comes of it is not to be laid at my door.”

“Sybil, I promise that, whatever catastrophe the future of this day may have in store, it shall not be visited on you,” said Millicent. “You have warned me of my peril, and, you know, he who is forewarned is forearmed. Tell me, now, what have you done with Mr. Halsted?”

“Done with him? What did you want me to do with him?”

“Either kill him or cure him.”

“I should kill him, if I could,” said Sybil. “I never knew so perverse a man in the whole course of my life.”

She dragged out the last words with an emphasis that might have led one to suppose the course of her life embraced a period of at least ninety-nine years.

“What is he perverse about?” inquired her friend.

“He won’t change his politics, he won’t go back to the States, and he won’t marry the girl he ought to marry.”

She enumerated these grievances with a gusto of indignation that made us scream with laughter.

“I thought his politics were on the right side—that is, on your side,” said Millicent when she had recovered her gravity.

“That’s the wrong side,” said Sybil; “her politics are strongly Democratic, and there is not the ghost of a chance for him, unless he turns Democrat too.”

“But if he does not want a chance?” I ventured to put in.

“But he ought; I want him to want it. She’s the very sweetest girl in the whole of the United States; and her father is the dearest old man, and would give her a splendid fortune if Mr. Halsted would marry her. And everybody believed he would; only old Nick put it into his head to come out to Europe, and he has gone and fallen in love with another girl!”

“Who won’t marry him?” suggested Milly.

“Certainly not!” declared Sybil.

At this juncture Dr. and Mrs. Segrave came in, bringing my mother with them. She was dressed for me to go out with her, so I had to run off to equip myself, having first cordially invited Millicent Gray to come and see me as soon as possible.

She came the next day, and on a strange errand, considering the warnings of Sybil.

“I am anxious to be of some use to the poor,” she said, after we had talked some little time, “and I don’t know how to go about it here. I suppose there are no Protestants to visit, or at least they must be very few; would there be any objection to my visiting Catholics?”

“Not the slightest,” I replied, “unless you intend to whisk them into the Protestant Church before they know where they are; in that case I don’t think M. le Curé would care to enlist your services.”

“I have no sinister designs of that sort, I assure you,” said Millicent; “and to prove it, I want you to let me go with you on your rounds. I will make myself useful in any way you appoint, and I will do exactly as you tell me—as far as I know how, that is.”

I said, of course, that I should be delighted to have her as a companion, and that we should begin our partnership to-morrow; but my mother came in as we were settling about the hour we were to meet, and unexpectedly put a spoke in the wheel.

“Does Mrs. Gray approve of this arrangement, my dear?” she inquired.

“I have not mentioned it to her,” replied Millicent, her American ideas of independence evidently a little shocked by the question; “but she is sure to approve of it when I do. Is there any reason why she should not?”

“There may be. You are a Protestant, and this scheme of visiting the poor with my daughter must bring you in contact with Catholics of various classes—the poor, the Sisters of Charity, perhaps incidentally with M. le Curé and other priests. Before you embark on these perils I should prefer that your mother’s consent was secured. We English mothers have Old-World prejudices about parental authority, you perceive,” added mamma, smiling; “you will not mind humoring mine in this case.”

Millicent declared her perfect readiness to do so. She looked like one who would gladly humor everybody’s wishes. I was already in love with her. The charm which attracted me that night amidst the gay crowd had not fled “like the talisman’s glittering glory” on a nearer approach. I was at a loss to see where the point of mutual attraction lay between her and Sybil; but Sybil was one of those creatures who spirited away your sympathies before you had time to challenge the thief or lay a protecting hand upon your treasure. She was a siren, who drew you to her cave and did not devour you. Millicent was a complete contrast to her in appearance as well as in character; her eyes were deep blue, and her hair, which was very dark, whitened her fair complexion to the transparency of alabaster, and gave a stronger individuality to her delicate features than blond hair, which seemed their natural birthright, could have lent them. She was very tall, and her small, beautifully-formed hands and feet put the seal on the character of singular refinement which pervaded her whole exterior.

My mother was greatly taken with her. “You have committed yourself more seriously in this case, it strikes me,” she remarked when Millicent had taken leave.

“They are settled in Paris permanently,” I replied; “I asked her that at once. I should not have embarked on an intimacy with her, if they had been only birds of passage.”

Mrs. Gray made no difficulty about Millicent’s joining me in my visits to the poor; she observed, indeed—very naturally, I thought—that “Mrs. Wallace ran just the same risk in allowing her daughter to associate with Millicent.” Millicent returned next morning quite jubilant with this message, and we set out on our first walk together. We agreed that we were not to improve this or any future opportunity to convert each other. Was I quite sincere when I entered on this agreement? Looking back on it, I think I can honestly say I was. I meant that I would not discuss religion or say anything to prejudice Millicent against her own; that I would rigidly avoid controversy; and in all this I kept my word. But I did not disguise from myself that I had a great longing to see her a Catholic, and that I should do my best in another way to bring about this result. For this purpose I had her name put down at Notre Dame des Victoires for prayers. I asked several of my friends to pray for the same intention, and I made a point of praying every day for it myself. I took her to see Sœur Lucie, a Sister of Charity I was very fond of, and I interested her in the same object. I counted a good deal, too, on the impression which the faith of the poor was likely to make on her.

I was just then much occupied with a poor woman named Mme. Martin, who was dying, who had been dying these five years of a very painful malady. I think she was the first person I took Millicent to see. She lived in a room on the sixth floor—that is, in the attic—of a house where her mother was concierge. She had been better educated than the generality of her class, having been brought up as a teacher of singing. This pursuit had subsequently thrown her into the society of persons much above her in position, and the contact had contributed still more to educate and refine her. She had consequently acquired something of the varnish of a lady, and, without being really educated, she had gained that increased capacity for suffering which even imperfect education gives. Her illness had thrown her back into her original position and surroundings, and these were perfect misery to her. She could not bear the society of the servants—her constant one now, owing to that horrible French system of stowing away the servants of every flat in the same house into pigeon-holes under the roof, old and young, men and women, innocent, honest girls and vicious old veterans in dishonesty, all crammed higgledy-piggledy in a proximity full of dangers to both soul and body. This population of the pigeon-holes was insupportable to Mme. Martin; she had nothing in common with them nor they with her. They pitied her—for the French are always kind-hearted—but they resented her evident superiority, and often showed their pity in a way that hurt more than it soothed. She writhed under the compassion of these coarse, vulgar-minded men and women, whose conversation turned chiefly on the domestic concerns of their masters, how they cheated them, the tricks they practised on them.

They came to see, after a while, that she did not care for their society, and they ceased to inflict it on her, and Mme. Martin came gradually to be as isolated as if she had been living in a desert. She was glad of it in one way. We most of us prefer solitude to unsympathetic company; we had rather be left alone than intruded on by those loud voices and heavy steps that jar so painfully on the nervous atmosphere of a sick-room; but there were times when her loneliness weighed terribly on her, when she longed for any hand that would but raise her paralyzed limbs from a posture that had grown agonizing from prolonged immobility, that would give her the drink that was just beyond the reach of her arm. Her mother could come to her but very seldom; she dared not absent herself during the busy portion of the day from her lodge downstairs. Sœur Lucie was very kind, and came as often as she could; it was she who had taken me to her and begged me to look after her. I was the better able to do so that Mme. Martin lived only five minutes’ walk from our house. I don’t think I ever came in contact with a sufferer who edified me more than this poor woman. It was not that she was so wonderfully pious, or heroic, or resigned; she was all three by turns, but none constantly. Perhaps it was this very fluctuation that made one realize so vividly the supernaturalness of the struggle she was carrying on. You saw the power of the sacraments, the action of grace working on her soul, almost as visibly as that of medicine on the body. She was a woman of very strong passions, acute sensibilities, and ardent imagination; you can fancy what it was to such a nature to be immured in a room about twelve feet long by eight, with a roof slanting to the floor at one side, and a window in the slant, incapable of moving in her bed without help, dependent on charity for even that bed and for the bread she ate. For the first years of her illness this misery was so unendurable, she told me, that she thought it would have driven her mad, and the terror of this prospect was the most unbearable thing of all. She had not the consolations of religion then. Her artist life, with its alluring perils, its wild companions, its passionate aspirations, had led her away from the realities of the faith and gathered a mist before her eyes. But she fell ill, and then the mist began to clear away. The Sisters of Charity found her out, and the old sacred memories of childhood were awakened; her First Communion, with its sweet, pure joys, its lovely, solemn pageant, the bright companionship of kindred hearts starting with the fervent promise to the divine Guest whose first coming was the grand event, the supreme crisis of their little lives, the goal to which, thus far, their lives had tended—all this came back like a well-remembered dream at the sight of the gray habit and the white cornette. It was the old, old story: the prodigal had wandered into a strange country, and had grown homesick and turned back, and the Father had met him half way on the road. She had not fed upon the husks of swine, poor Mme. Martin; only “forgotten to eat her bread,” and hunger had driven her home. She spoke to me of her conversion in terms of such deep humility and compunction that I might have fancied her the most appalling sinner who had ever lived, if Sœur Lucie had not told me the exact history of it.

But it was not all sunshine and smooth waters even after this blessed welcome home. There were dreadful battles to be fought yet. She fought bravely, but not always with a smiling face and a glad heart. Oh! no. There were days, of such terrific anguish, such utter, black despair, that it used to seem to me sometimes that her faith must fail this time, that nothing short of a miracle could save her now. And nothing else did. What greater miracle is there than the triumph of God’s grace over our corrupt and fallen nature, the victory of sacraments over the devil that holds our soul? It was a greater wonder to me every time I witnessed it in Mme. Martin. This presence of an evil spirit in her—a real though invisible presence of tremendous, almost omnipotent power—was so palpable that I used to feel something like the kind of terror one would feel near a person possessed. I always felt perfectly helpless while the crisis lasted, and would sit there and listen dumbly while she uttered her bitter, fierce words, not raving in loud, wild accents, but with a sort of hard, suppressed anger, a deep-down rebellion against the cruel, all-powerful will that was torturing her. There was no use arguing or preaching, or trying to make her see the sinfulness and the stupidity of it all; one could do nothing but bear with it, praying silently to God to come to her, and lay his finger on the wounded soul, and speak with his voice, and bid the winds be still.

One thing struck me with peculiar significance: no matter how fiercely rebellious she was towards God, she could always turn with a softened glance towards his Blessed Mother. There was an old print of the Mater Dolorosa on the wall over her bed, and it was the strangest thing to see the poor sufferer lift her dark, vindictive eyes to it with a tender, compassionate, entreating glance, while words of almost savage petulance against the Son were still hot on her lips. Once I remember her bursting into tears as she turned towards it in one of these sudden appeals. The fiend was exorcised for that day. I sat beside her till she had cried herself to sleep like a tired, naughty child.

These terrible days were invariably followed by periods of compunction, humble self-reproach, and love so fervent and consoling that it used to seem to me they could never pass away, that the darkness could never return, that this time the rescue was complete and irrevocable. The humility with which she would beg my pardon for the scandal she had given me, the way she would upbraid herself for her base ingratitude to our Blessed Lord, were more touching than I can describe. She would look up fondly towards the Mater Dolorosa with such an expression of tenderness on her haggard, sunken face, and say, as if apostrophizing it: “Ah! I knew she would gain the victory. I knew she would not desert me! Pauvre mère! Elle a tant souffert!”

The first day that I took Millicent Gray to see her she was in one of these blessed, penitential moods. It had lasted through several days—days of fearful suffering, and nights of sleepless weariness. She uttered an exclamation of joyous welcome when I appeared.

“Que le bon Dieu est bon! I knew he would not keep me waiting much longer. My little stock of patience was just coming to an end!” And she smiled good-humoredly.

“What is it you want?” I inquired.

“I was dying with thirst,” she said, “and I managed to draw this cup to me by hooking my finger in the handle, but I was in such a hurry to drink it that it slipped from me, and I am all wet and half-perished!” And, indeed, she was trembling with cold; her hands were like ice and her teeth chattered. I hastened to lift her up on her pillows and repair the accident, Millicent helping very dexterously. I had prepared Mme. Martin for her visit, so merely introduced her as a friend of mine, who would be glad to come and see her sometimes, if she allowed it.

When we had settled her in some degree of comfort, Millicent and I sat down and began to converse. Mme. Martin was in too great pain to join in the conversation, except by throwing in a word now and then to show she was following it, but one could see she was interested in what we were saying. There was an unusual brightness and peace about her, in the expression of her face and the tone of her voice; I rejoiced that Millicent should see it, for I knew it could not fail to impress her.

“Was last night as bad as the preceding ones?” I said when we were going away.

“Yes; it was very bad. I did not get a moment’s rest till it was daylight,” she said; and she smiled quite serenely.

“My poor friend! How cruelly tried you are!” I could not help exclaiming. “May God give you courage!”

“He does! he does!” she cried fervently. “It is a miracle how good he is to me—a miracle.”

“We must ask him for another one, that your courage may be rewarded by a cure,” said Millicent kindly.

“Oh! no. Don’t ask for that! I don’t want it!” said Mme. Martin quickly, as if she were frightened the miracle was going to be wrought on the spot. “I don’t want to be cured, only to be sustained, and to go on suffering a long time—as long, that is, as He likes—that I may prove I am not ungrateful; that I love him a little bit after all he has done for me! All he has done for me!” There was a look almost of ecstasy on her features as she said this, her face slightly upturned, but her eyes closed as if she were looking within her, into that sanctuary of her soul where God was present. I felt, rather than saw, Millicent turn a sudden, startled glance towards me.

“That is the most precious and most beautiful of all miracles,” I said presently, “that our hard hearts should be softened by the cross, and that we should come to love it for His sake; is it not?”

“Yes,” she replied; “it is the one I have most prayed for. It is to her I owe it.” And she turned to the Mater Dolorosa. “In my worst moments I always felt for her; that my cross was nothing compared to hers—nothing! Pauvre mère!”

When we were out of earshot, on the landing about half way down the narrow stair, Millicent stopped, and, looking round at me, said: “Her brain has begun to be affected; she is a little mad, poor creature, is she not?”

“Yes,” I replied, “she is; she has got what we call the madness of the cross. Many of our saints have died of it: la folie de la croix.”

Millicent stared at me for a moment with an expression that suggested some vague alarm as to my own sanity, but she made no further remark until we had got out into the street.

“What did she mean by saying it was the Virgin Mary that worked the miracle for her?” she then asked.

“She meant that the Mother of Sorrows had prayed for her and obtained a great grace for her.”

“But God would have given it to her, if she had asked him, without going to any creature for it, would he not?” answered Millicent.

“Perhaps; but he would be more willing to grant it to a creature who was sinless and his Mother, and who had stood by the side of his cross, than to a poor weak, rebellious creature who had sinned a thousand times and more. Does it not seem likely?”

“Oh! putting it in that way,” said Millicent dubiously. “But he is God, our Saviour; he must love us more than she does. He died for us; the Virgin Mary did not die for us?”

“Well, really, Millicent—almost,” I said, and, stopping, I looked her straight in the face. “Fancy a mother that loved her son, her only son, as Mary must have loved him, standing by while he was being executed—I don’t say scourged, and beaten, and hammered with nails to a gibbet, murdered piecemeal with the rage of devils let loose from hell, but simply hanged, or even beheaded; would it not be worse to her than any death that ever a mother died? And then fancy her blessing the men that murdered him, praying for them, adopting them! And you can say the Mother of God did not die for us?”

Millicent made no answer, but walked on in silence. We said no more until we got to my door, and then I asked if she would not come up and rest a while.

“No, I prefer to go home, thank you,” she said, putting out her hand. She held mine for a moment, as if she were going to say something; but she did not, and we parted silently.

She seemed strangely moved.

II.

I did not see Millicent until the following Sunday, when she came to ask me if I would go for a walk in the afternoon.

Sybil happened to be there when she came in.

“What hour do you go to church, Milly—the morning or the afternoon?” asked Sybil. I saw the drift of the question: she suspected Millicent had been to church with us.

“I generally go in the morning; mamma likes it best,” replied Millicent. “She was not well this morning, so we are going to late service. And you?”

“Me? I don’t go to late or early. I stay at home and think it over,” said Sybil.

“Think what over?” I asked. “The service?”

“Services in general, religion in its cause and effect—life altogether, in fact,” summed up Sybil. “Will you two let me join you in your walk this afternoon, or shall I be in the way?” We both protested we should be delighted to have her; and at four o’clock we were assembled down-stairs in her boudoir, ready to start, when a loud ring sounded at the door.

“Good gracious!” screamed Sybil; and she dropped into a chair, the picture of astonishment and vexation. “I’ll bet any mortal thing you like that that is Mr. Halsted! Was there ever anything so provoking! I so wanted to have a walk with you!”

“Why need his coming prevent you?” I said. “The doctor and Mrs. Segrave are at home, are they not?”

“Why, Lilly, how can you talk so!” she exclaimed. “What does that matter to Mr. Halsted? He comes to see me!”

“Then you throw us overboard?” I said. “That’s complimentary. What do you say, Millicent?”

Millicent laughed. She was not sorry at heart, I could see, that we were to be left to a tête-à-tête. Perhaps Sybil saw it, too, for she said, starting up suddenly:

“I won’t throw you overboard. Let him call again. Let him come with us, if he likes. Have you two any objection?”

Millicent said she had none. I, however, demurred.

“You will think it absurdly priggish,” I said, “but you know I am half-French—at least, I live amongst the French, so I can’t afford to knock against their hautes convenances; and if I were seen walking with a gentleman without my mother or some married chaperon, it would make quite a scandale.”

“How inconceivably ridiculous!” cried Sybil, staring at me with round, shining eyes. “What a grand privilege it is to be a free-born American woman! I wouldn’t be a slave like you—no, not for the empire of France, Lilly!”

Pierre came to the door to announce Mr. Halsted’s arrival, and we all sallied into the drawing-room. Sybil burst out into regrets at having to go out, and then, pointing a finger of scorn at me, “Only fancy!” she cried—“you’ll hardly believe it, but it’s a fact—Miss Wallace says she dare not come out for a walk with you without her mother, lest it should make a scandal in the town! Did you ever hear anything so preposterously absurd, Mr. Halsted?” I crimsoned to the roots of my hair, and longed to choke Sybil on the spot. Happily, gentlemen being the same in all countries, Mr. Halsted saw my embarrassment and turned it off with easy good breeding.

“Miss Wallace has been brought up in France,” he said. “It is quite natural she should have adopted the notions and manners of the country; but it’s rather hard on us poor fellows. We are cut off from our most cherished prerogatives here in this centre of civilization. May I call this evening? You promised to teach me the Polish mazurka?”

Sybil hesitated. There was to be a dinner-party that evening, so the dancing lesson could hardly take place, and I knew he wanted to figure in the mazurka at a Polish house the next night.

“I can’t this evening,” she said musingly; then, as if moved by a sudden inspiration, she flung down her muff. “I see I must victimize myself for my country’s sake, and give up my walk to save you from making an exhibition of yourself to-morrow before the assembled nations. You two go and take your walk alone.”

Mr. Halsted entered a feeble protest, which Sybil did not even so much as notice, but proceeded to take off her bonnet and prepare for the dancing lesson.

We were not long on the road together when Millicent opened the subject of religion; Sybil’s idea of “thinking it over” being the ostensible pretext.

“I wonder you don’t talk to her about it,” she said; “you might do a good work in that direction, if you tried.”

“By making a Catholic of Sybil?”

“By making a Christian of her.”

“Poor Sybil! Is she as bad as that?” I said, laughing. “She is more in your line than mine, at any rate. She hates popery like fire; I would as soon try to convert the Great Mogul.”

“You are a great puzzle to me, do you know,” said Millicent, looking at me with a glance of searching curiosity. “Catholics as a rule are such ardent proselytizers, and you seem to have no taste in that direction at all.”

“Have you known a great many Catholics before me?” I asked.

“You are the first I may say I have ever known.”

“Then how can you answer for what we are as a rule?”

“I have always understood it,” she replied.

“You have understood, or rather misunderstood, many things about us,” I remarked. “Is Mr. Halsted in love with Sybil, do you think?”

“Mr. Halsted is nothing of the kind. Nice conversation for the Sunday afternoon!” said a sharp, bright voice, and Millicent and I leaped half a mile asunder as Sybil popped her scarlet feather in between us.

“I made sure you would be discussing theology,” she cried, “instead of which I find you discussing me!”

“And why are not you discussing the mazurka with Mr. Halsted?” demanded Millicent and I together.

“Because I thought better of it,” was Sybil’s terse explanation, nor could we extract any other from her.

“What were you talking about before you began about Mr. Halsted and me?” she inquired, flashing her lightning glances from one to another.

“We were talking about you and the Great Mogul,” I replied, “and I was considering which of you I should first set about converting.”

“You had better begin with him,” said Sybil. “Have you done for Milly already?”

“Not—quite—” I said.

“I should like to have it out with you once for all, Lilly,” she said, “and just hear from beginning to end what your religious views are, and how far exactly they differ from mine.”

“You have views on religion, then?” I said in a tone of surprise.

“Certainly I have, Lilly Wallace,” retorted Sybil with indignant emphasis, “and I should like very much to compare them with yours.”

“That would be difficult,” I replied, “for I have no views.”

“What!”

“Not the ghost of one,” I repeated. “We Catholics never have; we listen to the church and accept all she teaches. There is not such a thing amongst us as a view; we would not know what to do with one.”

“Good gracious! That reasonable beings should let themselves be so gul—so—that you should—in fact, it’s beyond belief!”

“No, that’s just what it is not beyond; it is our belief that binds our reason and puts views out of the question,” I said. “We have our faith propounded to us by the church, and the church is the infallible witness of the truth; we have not to make out a creed for ourselves, as you Protestants have.”

“Then why did God give us brains, if we are not to make use of them?” demanded Sybil. “I would not hand over my conscience to any man or any body of men living; I would rather take my Bible and make out the right and the wrong of it myself.”

“Suppose you make it out all wrong—for you admit there is a right and a wrong to it—what then?” I said.

“It does not much matter, so long as our intention is good. God Almighty does not expect us to be infallible.”

“Certainly not!” I replied; “that is precisely why he made his church infallible, to save us from our own fallibility and teach us what to believe and what not to believe. If I believe black and you believe white, we can’t both of us be right; one or other must be in error, and God, who is Truth itself, can’t approve equally truth and error?”

“I tell you what it is, Milly,” said Sybil, turning round sharply on Millicent, who was walking on the other side of her, “it is very bad for you to be discussing theology with Lilly Wallace in this way. Mind what I tell you, no good will come of it!”

“Why, I’ve not opened my lips!” protested silent Milly. “It is you who are discussing it; it was you began it!”

“If I had not, you would,” retorted Sybil; “you are perfectly crazed on religious discussion. I see how it is going to end!”

I burst out laughing. Millicent, however, looked amazed.

“I will tell you what I see,” I said: “that you had much better have stayed at home and discussed life with Mr. Halsted than come out here to bully us. It would be serving you right if I made a papist of you on the spot.”

Sybil saw that Millicent was vexed, and, adroitly dropping the subject, burst out into vehement denunciation of French conventionalities. If it had been any other country in the universe, Mr. Halsted might have come out for a walk with us, and we should have had an excellent time of it; for he was the very best company she knew. We continued, nevertheless, despite his absence, to enjoy a very pleasant walk, and to steer clear of burning subjects the rest of the way. The incident, however, left its mark on us all three, and from that day forth there was an imperceptible but a very decided change in Millicent’s “views.” As to Sybil’s, I never got a glimpse of them, so it may not be rash judgment to express a doubt whether she had any.

I kept to my promise of avoiding controversy with Millicent, and she, seeing my reluctance to gratify her curiosity on this point, gave up trying to overcome it. We talked very freely on religious customs and institutions, but whenever she demanded my reasons for believing this or that I evaded controversy by that inexorable Catholic answer so aggravating to a Protestant—“The church teaches it.”

The winter passed, and the spring, and my mother and I were preparing to leave Paris to spend the month of June in London. One of my greatest difficulties in going away was how poor Mme. Martin was to get on in my absence. Millicent had come with me once a week to visit her. She would continue to do this when I was gone, I had no doubt; but the poor soul was in a state that required a visit every day, and I hardly dare ask or expect that Millicent would break from her mother and her own occupations regularly every day for this purpose, or that Mrs. Gray would allow it. I told her of my trouble, and the next morning she ran in looking quite radiant.

“Mamma says she will allow me to go every morning from eleven to twelve and sit with Mme. Martin and do all she wants; is it not good of her!” she exclaimed, embracing me.

“It is!” I cried, “and very good of you, dear Milly. You can’t think what a relief it is to my mind! I was miserable at the thought of leaving her without some one to take my place of a morning; and she is so fond of you, poor soul! She is so touched by your charity—above all in a heretic!” I added, laughing.

“Charity covereth a multitude of sins,” said Millicent. “I suppose the sin of heresy is included?”

It was quite true: Mme. Martin was wonderfully taken with her. She admired her grace, the quiet distinction of her manner, the subdued elegance of her dress—a Frenchwoman has an eye for la toilette so long as the breath of life is in her—and most of all the gentle kindness with which Millicent performed the little services of the sick-room. It was quite beyond her comprehension that so much sweetness and goodness should exist in anybody who was not a Catholic; it was most amusing to see her naïf wonder at this phenomenon, and her surprise that I did not abolish it.

“But, mademoiselle, why do you not explain to her how dreadful it is not to be in the true church?” she would urge again and again; and to my answer, “I have tried, but she cannot see it,” she would return the same wondering exclamation, “Est-il-possible!”

She evinced as much pleasure as surprise when I told her that Millicent was to come every day during my absence, and read to her and put things tidy in the little room.

“Now,” I said, “you must pay back all this kindness by getting the grace of the faith for her.”

“Oh! if I could but do it,” she exclaimed heartily.

“You may do a great deal,” I said; “your prayers ought to be very powerful with our Blessed Lord, because you are on the cross.”

She shook her head.

“If I lay on it lovingly, as he did,” she said; “but I don’t—not always, at least. I wriggle, and kick, and try to slip off it every now and then.” And she heaved a deep sigh.

“You are not a saint,” I said; “of course you have your ups and downs, but you would rather stay on the cross for any length of time than get off it, if you could, against the will of God, would you not?”

“Oh! yes, that I would,” she answered impulsively.

“Then you are all right,” I said. “Never mind the wriggling and the kicking; your heart is loyal to God, and that’s what he looks to. Set about asking for Mademoiselle Gray’s conversion, and he will not refuse it to you. Offer up all your sufferings for it from this time forth, and I feel perfectly certain our Lord will grant it to you.”

“Well, I will try,” she said, in an accent of simplicity and earnestness that sounded already like a guarantee of success; and then, looking at her Mater Dolorosa, she added suddenly: “I will ask her to get it!”

I had brought some fresh flowers, and was arranging them in a pretty vase that Millicent had given her, when my eye fell upon a new book that lay beside it. It was Notre Dame de Lourdes, which Sœur Lucie had brought her the day before.

“I will get Mademoiselle Gray to read me some of it every morning,” said Mme. Martin; “they say it is beautiful. Do you think she will mind reading it?”

I thought not, and was delighted with the suggestion.

“I have a beautiful life of St. Francis de Sales which I will bring you,” I said, “and you will ask her to read it to you when this is finished. He was a charming saint, and had a great deal to do with converting Protestants; ask him to help you.”

We consulted what other books it would be advisable to get, and what snares were to be set in other ways for Millicent. Sœur Lucie was, of course, to be actively established in the service, the orphans were to be set to pray—nothing was to be left undone, in fact, for the capture of the unsuspecting soul. Of course this was all very treacherous and base, and we were no better than a pair of designing Jesuits—so our Protestant friends will say, if they should happen to light on my little story. I cannot help it if they think so.

We left Paris, my mother and I, and during the three months of our absence Millicent devoted herself like a real Sister of Charity to the service of our poor friend. The weather became intensely hot, but she never let this deter her; she never missed a day. She was inexhaustible in her devices for amusing and comforting the poor paralyzed invalid: she made her bed, and dusted her room, and kept it fragrant with flowers; she brought her little delicacies of every sort; she read to her by the hour—for, though it had been understood that she was only to devote from eleven to twelve to this visit of charity, she managed generally to spend double that time there. All this kindness called out passionate love and gratitude from Mme. Martin. She longed with the most intense longing to requite it by drawing down a blessing upon Millicent; she told me afterwards that the yearning to obtain the faith for her grew to be a kind of thirst that never left her day or night. She offered her sufferings—and they were manifold and terrible—her weary, sleepless nights, her long days of feverish loneliness, every pain and trial of soul and body, not once nor many times a day, but constantly, for her dear benefactress’ conversion, till it became an idée fixe that was never absent from her mind, and found vent continually in interior aspirations or ejaculatory prayers; waking or sleeping, there it was, a part of herself, something that never left her. If she lay awake at night, restless and throbbing with pain, she comforted herself with the thought that it was so much suffered for this dear object; she fell asleep praying for it, and woke up to pray for it again.

We returned to Paris just as Mrs. Gray and Millicent were getting ready to start for some watering place, from which they were to proceed to the south and not return until the spring. Their departure was a real sorrow to me. I had grown sincerely attached to Millicent, and she to me. I had struggled at first to keep my feelings within the proper bounds, not to let myself slip into bondage and so prepare the day of reckoning that waits on all human affections; but the chains had coiled round me unawares, and when it came to saying good-by I found myself hopelessly a captive. We parted with full hearts and promises of mutual remembrance. Millicent was afflicted with that common vice, hatred to letter-writing, which so many of our friends make us suffer from, so we exchanged no vows in this respect, I steadily refusing to write unless my letters were answered. Our separation was therefore likely to be complete.

“You will pray for me, at all events?” she whispered as we embraced.

“Yes,” I said, “but on condition that you pray for me.”

Sybil went with me to the railway station to see the Grays off. She was sorry to lose Millicent, but I could see at the same time that she was glad to have her out of the way.

“I never expected to see Milly come so safely out of it!” she exclaimed as we turned away, after watching the train puff out of the station. “I could have staked my head on it that you would have made a Romanist of her by this.”

“You would have lost your head, then, and, such as it is, you would be worse off without it,” I answered crossly. “One really would imagine, to hear you talk, Sybil, that the faith was a disease that people caught like measles or the small-pox.”

“And so it is—that is—I don’t mean exactly that—but it certainly is contagious; everybody says it is, and that there is nothing so dangerous as living amongst good Catholics. I was terrified out of my life for Milly; I told her so over and over again, and did my very best to protect her. But I must say you have behaved very honorably, Lilly; I suppose there is hardly a Roman Catholic you know who would have behaved as well.”

“You mean to be complimentary, so I suppose I ought to say 'thank you,’” I replied, while I could not but laugh at her impertinence. “Just tell me one thing, Sybil,” I said: “You admit the right of private judgment, don’t you?”

“Do I? Why, I admit nothing else!” screamed Sybil.

“Then if Protestants, in right of their private judgment, choose to believe in the Catholic Church, what have you to say against it?”

“Only this: that in becoming Catholics they don’t exercise their private judgment, they renounce it,” said Sybil.

“After they become Catholics; but in the first instance? The act of renunciation involves an exercise of the judgment, does it not?”

“Oh! if you are going to be metaphysical, I give in,” said Sybil; “I hate and detest metaphysics!”

“Well, just answer me this much,” I pleaded: “Do you think Catholics are all certain to be damned?”

“Good gracious! I don’t believe one of them will be damned. Not the good ones, at any rate—not such as you, Lilly!” replied Sybil with extraordinary vehemence.

“Then why, in the name of wonder, should you have such a horror of any one becoming a Catholic?” I asked.

“Why? Why, because it’s a dreadful thing to ... change one’s religion, and the Roman Catholic religion is full of superstitions, of mistakes of all sorts.... But look! I declare that’s Mr. Halsted on the other side of the street, and he sees us and is coming across!”

“In time to rescue you from metaphysics,” I said. “I hope he won’t stand and speak to us; do you think he will?”

“I won’t let him; I’ll make him walk on at once with us,” said Sybil.

“O Sybil!” I cried, “you must not do that; mamma would be very angry if I were seen walking with him alone.”

“What nonsense! You’re not alone; I'm here,” said Sybil.

“You don’t count,” I said; “you know you don’t.”

“Well, you talk of being complimentary,” protested Sybil, “but that beats all I ever said in the way of polite compliments.”

“You must dismiss him at once,” I said hurriedly, for he was close on us now; “if you don’t, I’ll call a cab and go home alone.”

Mr. Halsted, serenely unconscious of being a cause of terror or contention, approached, smiling, with his hat in the air. He rather affected the extreme of French courtesy in his demeanor towards ladies; which was a mistake, for his native American urbanity, frank and free from grimace and palaver, was much more formidable, if he had but known it. Strange to say, it had not occurred to me before that he was here on invitation; but this fact flashed on me suddenly as I noticed Sybil’s embarrassment. It was certainly hard on her to have to turn him away after inviting him to meet her. I saw but one way to rescue her and myself.

“I am so glad you have come; you will accompany Miss Segrave,” I said. “I am rather tired, and shall be thankful now to drive home. Will you kindly call a cab?”

There was a little pretence of protest, from Sybil, of offering that we should both drive, but I overruled this and had my own way. I was glad to be alone. I wanted to think about Millicent, to look back over the short history of our intercourse, to look forward to its possible issue. I felt disappointed. I had hoped to find her, if not a Catholic, at least very near it, on my return; I had built so much on Mme. Martin’s prayers, on the example of her patient piety, and the living triumph of the faith which she presented. Then I began to reflect that after all I was quite in the dark as to how far these hopes had been disappointed. I had had scarcely any opportunity of judging. Millicent and I had not been once entirely alone since my return, and it was impossible to enter on the subject in a room where others were present. By the time I reached home I had cheered up, and began to take a more hopeful view of things. God works slowly, I said to myself; what are three months to his eternal patience? Mme. Martin was full of hope, though, like myself, the delay seemed long to her.

Her own day of trial was drawing to a close. I found her very much weaker, and altogether more worn and exhausted than when I left. Her soul, on the contrary, seemed to have risen to a higher and purer region, and to be breathing the air from the heavenly hills; her spirit of detachment, her love of the cross, had reached those heights where I could only follow her with a gaze of wondering, awe-stricken admiration. I had always felt a poor creature by the side of her, but I had felt justified in offering her sometimes what little help I could, reminding her of consolations and truths that temptation or overpowering physical pain had momentarily obscured. From this time forth I never dared to do so. Indeed, the opportunities which she herself had formerly furnished for it never occurred. That folly of the cross which had been a source of mild scandal to Millicent on the occasion of their first meeting had come to be her normal state. She had chewed the bitter wood until it had become sweet. The winter wore on and brought no change in her condition, except the gradual, almost imperceptible decay of strength which foretold the approaching close of the struggle. She continually asked for news of Millicent; I was able to tell her that she was well and happy. There were some American families at Cannes who wrote now and then to the Segraves, and generally reported of mutual friends; but Millicent herself perversely refrained from writing to me. I half suspected that there was a motive in this. I said so to Mme. Martin, and it consoled her greatly.

“Yes, it is very possible,” she remarked. “I often fancied Mademoiselle Gray wished to speak more openly to me than she did; the life of St. Francis of Sales evidently made a great impression on her. Sometimes, when she was reading to me, she would stop and look up as if she were going to ask a question, but, after hesitating a moment, she would go on without saying anything.”

“You must pray harder than ever,” I said; “there is nothing else to be done.”

“When I am in purgatory, please God, I will pray for her,” she replied.

“I hope you may go straight to heaven without going through purgatory at all,” I said; “you have suffered so long and so patiently!”

But she shook her head, and answered, with a look of austere humility I shall never forget:

“What are my sufferings compared to my sins—compared to the holiness of God?”

“Do you long very much to see heaven—to know what it is like?” I said, after we had been silent a while.

“No; I can’t say I do,” she replied. “I only long to see God.”

“Do you realize at all what the vision will be?” I asked.

“No,” she said, and her black eyes, so deep-sunk in their sockets, were lifted up with an expression of eager, tender yearning that was indescribable. “I realize nothing; but when I try to do so, I feel the most wonderful peace stealing over me—a sense of safety, of rest, of happiness. I can’t describe it; but it is like a foretaste of the bliss of Paradise—to see God! That is what makes Paradise!”

She was speaking rather to herself than to me, in a low voice, scarcely above a murmur. I felt that God was very near to her; the low-roofed attic was filled with an august, unseen Presence that touched us with a thrilling solemnity.

Presently I said: “You will remember me when you see God, will you not? You will pray for me by my name?”

“Oh! yes, that I will,” she answered, with a loving smile; “after my mother, you are the first person I shall name. I shall tell our Lord how kind you have been to me for his sake; I shall beg him to pay it all back to you.”

“There is very little to pay,” I said; “it has been a privilege and a delight to me to come and see you. But I will ask you to do some commissions for me the first thing when you get into heaven.”

I gave her the commissions. There were three. Millicent Gray’s conversion was the second on the list. She promised me solemnly that she would execute them, either in heaven, if she was so happy as to go there straight, or else in Purgatory, if this were possible.

It was wonderful to see the calmness with which she lay there discussing the prospects of the life beyond, the simplicity and childlike fearlessness with which she watched the approach of death, while at the same time her soul was filled with a sort of awful reverence at the thought of appearing before God. It was impossible to witness it without having one’s faith quickened.

Christmas came. The winter was unusually severe, and the intense cold, from which it was impossible to protect her fully in her miserable room close under the thin roof, brought terrible aggravation to Mme. Martin’s sufferings. It interfered, too, with my daily visits; when the snow came I was compelled to limit them to one or two a week. This was a privation to both of us. I had grown not only deeply interested in her, but sincerely attached to her, and she, on her side, had come to love me with a love of sympathy as well as gratitude that was very precious. It was like being in the companionship of a soul in purgatory; she seemed so loosened from this life, so lifted up, as if the nearness of God were all but a visible reality to her. The more the shadow of death closed round her, the more fully the light from the heavenly mount seemed to shine upon her. My visit was the solitary break in her long day—the only little breeze of human sympathy and comfort that came to refresh her. I knew it was a great trial to her to be deprived of it; she had often said the sound of my steps on the stairs was like a drink to her when she was parched with thirst; sometimes she greeted me playfully with the salutation, “Bonjour, mon verre d’eau fraîche!” But she had now grown so strong in sacrifice that it was difficult to trace the slightest symptom of regret in her. She would reproach me for coming out in the severe weather, declaring that she would rather never see me than have me take cold; that it was wrong of me to run such risks; and that there was no necessity for it, because she wanted for nothing, her mother came up twice a day to look after her, and so on.

One day she asked me if I had any news of Millicent. I had heard that very morning from Sybil that she was figuring with great success in some private theatricals at Mentone. But I did not like to tell Mme. Martin this; I feared it might shock her, or at least jar painfully on her present mood.

“She is very well,” I said. “You know she is very bad at writing letters; I only hear of her through friends.”

“I was dreaming of her last night,” she answered musingly. “How I wish she might become a Catholic before I die! It would be such a consolation to me to hear of it!”

“You will hear of it in the next world, please God,” I said.

“You think souls know what goes on on earth?” she inquired.

“Of course they do!” I said. “How could there be joy in heaven for the return of the sinner unless they heard of it?”

“Ah! yes, in heaven, to be sure; but I was thinking of purgatory. Do you think they know there what happens here below?”

“I see no reason for not believing it,” I replied. “Many saints and doctors have believed it; why should not our guardian angels carry messages from us to the angels of holy souls, if not to themselves direct, and tell them when we are helping and praying for them, and ask their prayers for us in return? It is a belief that fits in perfectly with the doctrine of the communion of saints.”

“It is a most consoling idea,” she said. “I shall be longing for a message from your guardian angel to tell me I have obtained all your requests.”

“Pray hard, then, that you may not have long to wait,” I said, kissing her face, that was looking up at me with a smile. I smoothed her pillows once more, and fussed about the bed and the room, with a pretence of busily setting things to rights, but in reality to hide an emotion that I could neither explain to myself nor master. I remember turning back, as I was closing the door, to have a last look at her. She made a sign with her head, and answered me with an affectionate smile.

On the stairs I met Sœur Lucie.

“She seems just the same, ma sœur,” I said. “How long do you think it will last like this?”

“Oh! not very long now,” she replied. “This cold will soon bring it to an end. She may be carried off at any moment.”

My heart gave a great thump against my side. I could not realize it, and yet it had been borne in upon me that this was the last visit I should pay her. The longing to kiss her once more, to say good-by with the full consciousness that it was to be for the last time, was so strong that I could not resist it. I turned back with Sœur Lucie, and went up again to her room. She did not seem surprised—at least, she said nothing about my reappearance. I waited a moment while Sœur Lucie questioned her, and then kissed her and said good-by.

“Au revoir,” she said, “au revoir. I will not forget your commissions; and mind you pray for me always.”

I was laid up with a violent attack of neuralgia for several days after this. One afternoon, about four days after I had seen her, a messenger came from Sœur Lucie to say that Mme. Martin was dying; she was to receive the Viaticum and Extreme Unction in an hour, and had expressed a wish that I might be present. The doctor was in the room when the message was delivered. I entreated him to let me get up and go, if it was possible.

“You will do as you wish,” he replied, “but you will do it against my emphatic prohibition. I won’t answer for the consequences, if you attempt it.”

Of course this settled the question. Had I been rash enough to try to disobey him, my mother was there to prevent it. I was greatly distressed. I had looked forward for so long to being with her at the last, to receiving her last kind word of farewell, and helping her with my love and my poor prayers through the great passage. My mother saw how pained I was, and volunteered to go and take my place, and tell Mme. Martin how grieved I was at being prevented. She just arrived as the room was being made ready for the coming of the priest. The dying woman had insisted on being taken out of bed and placed sitting up in a chair, that she might receive our Lord more befittingly on this his last visit to her; this was done accordingly with great difficulty and immense suffering to herself. She insisted, too, on being washed, and dressed in her best clothes, and, what struck me as still more characteristic at such a moment, she entreated her mother to put on her Sunday clothes, and to wear a cap which was only taken out on very great occasions. When all was ready, and the three assistants sat praying in silence, Mme. Martin signed to my mother that she wished to speak to her. “Give my love and thanks to Mlle. Lilia,” she whispered, “and tell her I will not forget her commissions.” Then, after a short silence, she said, as quickly as she could gasp out the words: “He is coming! Make haste! Light the candles!”

They did so, but waited still full ten minutes before the tinkle of the silver bell was heard on the stairs. Sœur Lucie told me this incident was not such a rare occurrence with the dying; that frequently they announce the approach of the Blessed Sacrament when the priest is yet a long way off, as if their senses were quickened by some spiritual faculty that is only awakened in death. The solemn, magnificent rite was performed, but it was too late to think of Holy Communion. The priest gave the last absolution and began the prayers for the dying. Before he had finished them the long struggle was over. Mme. Martin was at rest.

About five weeks after her death I received a letter from Millicent, informing me that she had become a Catholic. “It has been all so quickly done; I seem to have been so completely taken up and lifted into the church,” she said, “that I cannot help thinking some powerful supernatural agent has been at work all along overruling my own will. I had no more idea of becoming a Catholic than I had of turning Mohammedan—although all my sympathies had been quite gained over to the church by you and Mme. Martin—when one evening I went to act Racine’s Athalie at the house of a friend here. When it was all over, and the people were crowding round me with compliments and congratulations, a gentleman, a Catholic priest, came up and spoke to me; he thought I was a Catholic, and began at once to discourse on the grandeur of the Bible narrative and Racine’s interpretation of it. I undeceived him as soon as I had the chance; he seemed sorry and surprised, but went on talking very pleasantly, and, when we were saying good-evening, I said: 'My mother will be happy to see you, M. l’Abbé, if you would not object to call upon a heretic!’ I cannot to this day tell what moved me to say this. The next moment I thought I must have been out of my mind. He replied good-humoredly that he was not afraid of heretics, and was very glad when they were not afraid of him. My dear Lilly, if the heretics only knew, they would fly from that man as the devil does from holy water! He came to see us next day; it so happened mamma was out, so I saw him alone. I met him several times again, and—well, dear, before the month was out I was a Catholic. When I look back on it, it seems to me that I was in a dream, and that I was led on and on without any conscious will or action of my own, but just let myself follow the lead of some invisible attraction, some magnet that drew me in spite of myself, and here I am safe in St. Peter’s net and happily landed in his bark. Are people often converted in this way? Tell me if the church has invisible fishermen who go about casting nets and catching wayward, silly souls thus, or is it a special dispensation of mercy invented for me?”

“Dear, grateful Mme. Martin! How quickly and well you have executed my commission! Make haste and fulfil the others now!” I cried out to my dead friend on reading Millicent’s letter. She has kept me waiting for the other two; but I have not a doubt they will come in good time.

You can imagine Sybil’s feelings on hearing of this event. I shall certainly not attempt to depict them. Yet, in the midst of her genuine displeasure, there was a high note of satisfaction—the exultation of a prophet who had lived to see his prophecy fulfilled. I am sure this was a great comfort to her. We did not quarrel, though she let me plainly see she looked upon me as a kind of spiritual murderer. On the other hand, she took a more merciful view of it: It was to be, it was written; I was the appointed, or the permitted, instrument of Millicent’s destiny, and if I had not come some one else would; Millicent was doomed from the beginning.

In the spring my fears were realized: the doctor and Mrs. Segrave and Sybil sailed away to New York.

A few days before they left Paris Sybil burst into my room in high excitement.

“Will you believe it!” she cried. “Mr. Halsted has taken his place in the Tiger and is going back with us!”

“Well, and why not?” I said. “You and he will have delightful opportunities for discussing life on deck every day.”

Soon after their arrival I had a letter from her informing me that they had discussed it to the issue I had long since foreseen: she was to be married to him in a month.