"Dear, dear! how bitter I am becoming! How unhappy I am! What possesses me to think of this poor girl as an enemy? Is it because he took her to the cathedral yesterday and left me to General Harrington.
"We went to the cathedral again this morning. I saw General Harrington talking earnestly with James just before we started. He seemed a little angry. I could not hear a word, but they both looked towards me, and I saw the blood rush into James' face when he saw that I was regarding them. He hesitated a moment after the General left him, and advanced a step towards me, then wheeled suddenly and went away. A few minutes after I saw him walking towards the cathedral with Lucy Eaton. We followed them after a little, General Harrington observing, with a laugh, that we must give the young people their chances."
CHAPTER XLI.
THE CATHEDRAL AT SEVILLE.
"The cathedral was magnificent. All its rich properties in velvets, silver and gold, had been brought forth for its adornment. The altar was one blaze of light—tapers of snow-white wax rose in crowds from golden candlesticks, garlanded with flowers which sent their sweetness through the pungent smoke of the censers, and clothed the altar with a sacred whiteness. Reliquaires flaming with jewels, flashed out through all this noonday splendor, and two enormous tapers, six feet high, stood like sentinels on each side the altar. Yet all this was insufficient to light up the vast edifice or penetrate the chapels in the side aisles. Here all was shadowy and full of religious gloom, where any weary soul might pray in solitude, notwithstanding the priests were saying high mass at the great altar, and a grand choir of fresh, young voices filled the whole edifice with music which seemed born of Heaven.
"The gloom along the centre of the building was heightened by draperies of warm crimson velvet, which, banded at each seam with gold, swept down the vast stone pillars and fell in massive folds over the great entrance doors.
"I could not understand all that was said, for the service was in Latin, but I did feel the solemn swell of the music in every fibre of my being, and the devotional feeling which impressed the crowd touched me with holy sympathy.
"I do not know what caused the impulse, but Mrs. Harrington took my hand tenderly in hers. Then we stole to a side altar gleaming snow-white through the shadows, and kneeling down together asked that help and blessing from God which both of us thirsted for. The whispered prayers we uttered that solemn hour, undoubtedly sanctified a friendship which has been growing deeper and stronger from the first hour of my meeting with this lovely woman. She wept that day, and I saw, for the first time, that under her soft and gentle exterior, lay feelings and passions which the world would never dream of.
"I did not appear to notice the singular emotion she betrayed at that altar, but it recurred to me afterwards, and my mind was filled with conjectures about its cause. Surely it could not be her husband. No human being was ever more attentive and kind to a wife than General Harrington was to his. There was something almost chivalric in his devotion to her wishes. Was it her son? There my heart stood still. With only these near relatives in the world, she could have no grief which did not relate to them or one of them at least.
"That night Mrs. Harrington came into my room, which opened upon the same verandah with her own. She sat down on the sofa I occupied, and began to talk to me of the ceremonies we had witnessed that day in the cathedral. From that she glided gradually to other subjects, and dwelt with a touch of sadness on the impolicy of early marriages. 'Her own,' she said, 'had been a happy one, and she had married at sixteen; but as a general thing she would advise no girl to undertake the cares of domestic life under two or three and twenty. Particularly she would urge this on me. With no mother to guide me in a choice, with money enough to invite venal offers, I was, she thought, liable to peculiar temptations. Besides,' she added sweetly, 'I have no daughter, and crave a little of your life, for there will come a time when I shall be very lonely.'