"Were it not for Mary's influence, Florence would even now rest in the bosom of our Holy Church. She has done her cousin a grievous wrong; may God and the blessed Virgin forgive her!"
Mary groaned in spirit, as she marked the stern glance of his eagle eye, and feebly raising herself, she said: "Mr. Stewart, will you take this seat beside the sofa? I wish to speak with you."
Aunt Lizzy left the room hurriedly, as though she had already said too much, and silently he complied with Mary's request.
"You are pained and perplexed at what my aunt has just said; allow me to explain what may seem a great mystery. You are not aware that my uncle died a Papist. Weakened in body and mind by disease, he was sought and influenced in secret, when I little dreamed of such a change. On his death-bed he embraced the Romish faith, and, as I have since learned, exacted from Florry a promise to abide by the advice of his priest, in spiritual as well as temporal matters. He expired in the act of taking the sacrament, and our desolation of heart can be better imagined than described—left so utterly alone and unprotected, far from our relatives and the friends of our youth. I now marked a change in Florry, though at a loss to account for it. An influence, secret as that exerted on her lost parent, was likewise successful and, to my grief and astonishment, I found that she too had embraced papacy."
The door opened and Florence entered. She started on seeing her lover, but advanced to them much as usual. He raised his head, and cold and stern was the glance he bent on her beautiful face. She stood beside him, and rising, he placed a chair for her in perfect silence. Mary's heart ached, as she noted the marble paleness which overspread her cousin's cheek. Mr. Stewart folded his arms across his chest, and said in a low, stern, yet mournful tone:
"Florence, I could not have believed that you would have deceived me, as you have silently done."
Mournfully Florence looked for a moment on Mary's face, yet there was no reproach in her glance; it seemed but to say—"You have wakened me from my dream of happiness."
She lifted proudly her head, and fixed her dark eye full on her lover.
"Explain yourself, Mr. Stewart; I have a right to know with what I am charged, though I almost scorn to refute that of deceit."
"Not a week since, Florence, you heard me avow my dislike of the tenets and practises of the Romish Church. I said then, as now, that no strong-minded, intelligent woman of the present age could consult the page of history and then say that she conscientiously believed its doctrines to be pure and scriptural, or its practises in accordance with the teachings of our Saviour. You tacitly concurred in my opinions. Florence, did you tell me you had once held those doctrines in reverence? Nay, that even now you lean to papacy?" Stern was his tone, and cold and slightly contemptuous his glance.