The Canon’s voice trembled very much as he spoke, but his smile was one of single-hearted sincerity.
“But does she rejoice?” said Lucilla rather faintly.
“Indeed she does. I confess that Flora’s earnest desire for self-immolation, her ardent spirit, have taken me by surprise. She is of the stuff of which the martyrs were made. No austerity has any terrors for her—she is already far advanced upon the way of the mystic.”
Lucilla wrung her hands together.
“What is it, my dear one?” said her father gently.
She could not tell him. She felt unable to voice the terror and the profound distrust that possessed her at the thought of Flora, fanatically eager for discipline of her own seeking, finding in religious emotionalism an outlet for instincts that she had not dared, so far as Lucilla could judge, to call by their right name.
“One can only let other people go their own way, then?” she murmured, more to herself than to the Canon.
“Say, rather, the way appointed for them, dear Lucilla. Yours and mine may lie together yet awhile longer, I trust, but I am no longer young, and these repeated partings tell upon me. It is a sacrifice for you, too, to make, but let us do so cheerfully—aye, and right thankfully, too. Our little one has been chosen for the Bride of Heaven, as the beautiful old devotional phrase has it.”
Lucilla was only too conscious that the beautiful old devotional phrase awoke nothing in herself but a shuddering distaste.
She could not doubt, however, that its effect upon Flora was far otherwise.