So then she suddenly affected to remember her mistress's letter. She produced it with an apology. He took it with unfeigned eagerness, and read it in silence; and, having read it, he stood patient, with the tears in his eyes. Ryder eyed him with much curiosity and a little pity.
"Don't you take on for that," said she. "Why, she will be more at her ease when she visits you at your place than here; and she won't give you up, I promise."
The priest trembled, and Ryder saw it.
"But, my daughter," said he, "I am perplexed and grieved. It seems that I make mischief in your house: that is an ill office; I fear it is my duty to retire from this place altogether, rather than cause dissension between those whom the Church by holy sacrament hath bound together." So saying, he hung his head and sighed.
Ryder eyed him with a little pity, but more contempt.
"Why take other people's faults on your back?" said she. "My mistress is tied to a man she does not love; but that is not your fault; and he is jealous of you that never gave him cause. If I was a man he should not accuse me—for nothing: nor set his man on to drag me through a horse-pond—for nothing. I'd have the sweet as well as the bitter."
Father Leonard turned and looked at her with a face full of terror. Some beautiful, honeyed fiend seemed to be entering his heart and tempting it.
"Oh, hush! my daughter, hush!" he said; "what words are these for a virtuous woman to speak, and a priest to hear?"
"There, I have offended you by my blunt way," said the cajoling hussy, in soft and timid tones.
"Nay, not so; but oh speak not so lightly of things that peril the immortal soul."