“I? This: God being my Helper, I’ll never again stand between Him and any soul, except it be to pray for that soul’s health.”
Just then the maiden entered bearing a lamp which suddenly lighted the room, now well nigh in darkness. She presented a most striking and suggestive figure. Her eyes were full of her heart’s chief question, and, standing in the light of her own bearing, she seemed to fitly represent the part she had borne in that household.
Sir Charleroy, anticipating his daughter’s question, greeted her with promptness thus: “Sunshine, thy purpose I know. It’s all between God and thyself. Go gladden Father Adolphus and Cornelius with an early profession.”
She was filled with surprise, and voiced its chief cause:
“Cornelius? He’s at Jerusalem!”
“Well, if so, ’tis wonderful, since I met him here to-day.”
“I wonder,” she meditated, meanwhile speaking her thoughts as if unconscious of those about her, “What brought him here?”
“Oh,” replied the father, “he says ‘to see Father Adolphus about the church of Jerusalem;’ but Father Adolphus says ‘the young man came because he could not help it, to see his good angel.’”
“‘His good angel!’ Whom?”