Leonard's eloquence suffered no diminution, either in quantity or quality, and, after a while, Gaunt gave up his rule of never dining abroad on the Sunday. If his wife was not punctual, his stomach was: and he had not the same temptation to dine at home he used to have.
And, indeed, by degrees, instead of quietly enjoying his wife's company on that sweet day, he got to see less of her than on the week days.
[CHAPTER II]
Your mechanical preacher flings his words out happy-go-lucky; but the pulpit orator, like every other orator, feels his people's pulse as he speaks, and vibrates with them, and they with him.
So Leonard soon discovered he had a great listener in Mrs. Gaunt: she was always there whenever he preached, and her rapt attention never flagged. Her grey eyes never left his face, and, being up-turned, the full orbs came out in all their grandeur, and seemed an angel's come down from Heaven to hear him: for, indeed, to a very dark man, as Leonard was, the gentle radiance of a true Saxon beauty seems always more or less angelic.
By degrees this face became a help to the orator. In preaching he looked sometimes to it for sympathy, and lo, it was sure to be melting with sympathy. Was he led on to higher or deeper thoughts than most of his congregation could understand, he looked to this face to understand him; and lo, it had quite understood him, and was beaming with intelligence.
From a help and an encouragement it became a comfort and a delight to him.
On leaving the pulpit and cooling, he remembered its owner was no angel, but a woman of the world, and had put to him frivolous questions.
The illusion, however, was so beautiful that Leonard, being an imaginative man, was unwilling to dispel it by coming into familiar contact with Mrs. Gaunt. So he used to make his assistant visit her, and receive her when she came to confess, which was very rarely; for she was discouraged by her first reception.