“I can only repeat,” he said, “that I love you with all my heart and soul, but if it were to save you from wedding this vile profligate I could rejoice to see you the wife of any honourable man.”
“You leap to conclusions,” she said, relenting a little, “I am in no haste to wed. There is not even a promise given yet. I merely said he loved me. But enough! Let us come into the church and you shall see what havoc Waghorn wrought there.”
CHAPTER XXXVII.
“We must admit nothing which turns our worship from inward to outward, which tends to set the transitory in place of the eternal. Nothing external, however splendid and impressive, can bring us nearer to the Divine; but external things may engross and exhaust our powers of devotion. Veils of sense, no less than veils of intellect, may come between us and the spiritual, in which alone we can rest. To rest in forms is idolatry. Earth may hold us still under the guise of heaven.”
—Christian Aspects of Life.—Bishop Westcott.
When the two had passed through the little gate in the churchyard, and had disappeared inside the building, Peter Waghorn crept cautiously from his hiding place among the shrubs. Shaking his fist at the cross which was so obnoxious to him, he slowly made his way to his own house, his mind full of what he had overheard.
The long-delayed scheme for the destruction of the cross, upon which he had set his heart, had been frustrated at the very last moment by this young captain. Doubtless, Waghorn thought, he had been secretly persuaded beforehand by the soft blandishments of the Vicar’s niece. She had discreetly kept in the background throughout the scene, but, of course, it was all really her doing.
“Well, well,” he muttered grimly, as he sat down in his lonely room, “I have him in my power now, and can revenge myself on him! He baulked me as to the cross, and as good as called me a devil. The man’s a traitor! He’s one of the ungodly. I’ll unmask him even if for the nonce I have to play into Colonel Norton’s hands. I’ll take word to Canon Frome as to the despatches he is to bear to Windsor. Eh, eh! Captain Harford. I shall have you laid by the heels, and you shall bitterly rue the day when you set your hand to the plough and then turned back.”