[CHAPTER IX.]
Father Leonard, visited, soothed, and petted by his idol, recovered his spirits, and, if he pined during her absence, he was always so joyful in her presence that she thought of course he was permanently happy; so then, being by nature magnanimous and placable, she began to smile on her husband again, and a tacit reconciliation came about by natural degrees.
But this produced a startling result.
Leonard, as her confessor, had only to follow precedents, and ask questions his Church has printed for the use of confessors, and he soon learned enough to infer that their disunion had given way.
The consequence was that one day, being off his guard, or literally unable to contain his bursting heart any longer, he uttered a cry of jealous agony, and then in a torrent of burning, melting words, appealed to her pity. He painted her husband's happiness, and his own misery, and barren desolation, with a fervid passionate eloquence that paralysed his hearer, and left her pale and trembling, and the tears of pity trickling down her cheek.
Those silent tears calmed him a little; and he begged her forgiveness, and awaited his doom.
"I pity you," said she, angelically. "What? you jealous of my husband! Oh, pray to Christ and our Lady to cure you of this folly."
She rose, fluttering inwardly, but calm as a statue on the outside, gave him her hand, and went home very slowly; and the moment she was out of his sight she drooped her head like a crushed flower.
She was sad, ashamed, alarmed.