"Very true. But if I can offer spiritual consolation----"
"Take it to Lady Canvey. She needs it more than I do."
"I doubt that, or the call would not have come."
"It's a false alarm, padre," she said jeeringly. "I don't want to be preached at, and you're suffering from indigestion, or softening of the brain."
"Well, Lady James," said Lionel, rising with a sigh, "your limitations may lead you to look at the matter in that light. But if I can do nothing for you, I can only retire, after asking your pardon--as I do--for my intrusion;" and he made for the door.
Her mood changed with feminine rapidity, and she beckoned imperatively that he should remain. Disguise it as she would to Kaimes, his sudden coming on the top of her late puzzling experience drove her to acknowledge that something outside the material was at work. Leah was too clever a woman to deny the existence of more things in heaven and earth than came within the scope of her knowledge.
"It is the duty of you parsons to pry into the secrets of souls, I suppose," she said, leaning her elbow on the chair arm, and her chin on her hand. "But what interest can you have in my soul--if I have one?"
"I, as other servants of the Master, interest myself in all souls."
"That you may save them?"
"Only Christ can do that."