“I didn’t know you had a sister. Do tell me about her.”
“Well you see, I haven’t, except in a very broad sense. Sister Gertrude is the name of a young lady I met under rather interesting circumstances. Shall I tell you about her?”
Then Edward narrated the story of the troubles of Patrick Sullivan.
“Was she very beautiful?”
“Very. It was a sort of awful beauty. You forgot the artistic delight inspired by her perfection of form, colour, and expression, in the sense that you gazed upon one who was superior to mere charm of person. There seemed something like sacrilege in thinking of her as beautiful. I suppose a devout Catholic does not let his thoughts dwell upon the physical charms of the Madonna.”
“You cease to be critical, Mr. Beaumont, sometimes I see. And she was a lady, you say?”
“Unquestionably, or I’m no judge.”
“But, after all, this lady only does ostentatiously and to the sound of the drum and the tambourine what I, what we, try to do quietly and unostentatiously. You sneer at my tracts; but as I have no gifts for sermon-making, what can I do but take a tract?”
“Oh! I don’t find fault with the tracts, Miss St. Clair, though they’re twaddly things.”
Miss St. Clair smiled.