CHAPTER XIII.
After introducing Enid to the sorrow-stricken family, Vane took his leave of her to go about his work. He met the pony-cart coming up the hill, and told the footman to wait for his mistress outside the farmhouse. Then he went on to the other hamlet, doing his work just as well and conscientiously as ever, and yet all the while thinking many thoughts which had very little connection with it.
He got back to the Retreat just in time for supper, and when the meal was over he asked Father Philip for the favour of half an hour's conversation. The request was, of course, immediately granted, and as soon as he was alone with the old man, who was wise alike in the things of the world and in those of the spirit, he told him, not as penitent to confessor, but rather as pupil to teacher, the whole story of his meeting and conversation with Enid, not omitting the slightest detail that his memory held, from the first thrill of emotion that he had experienced on seeing her to the last word he had spoken to her on leaving the farmhouse.
Father Philip was silent for some time after he had finished his story, then, leaning back in his deep armchair, he looked at Vane, who was still walking slowly up and down the little room, and said in a quiet, matter-of-fact voice:
"I'm very glad, Maxwell, that you've told me this. As I have told you before, I have listened to a good many life-histories in this room, but I must admit that yours is one of the strangest and most difficult of them. The fact of Miss Raleigh having married the son of the lord of the manor here, and having come down while you are here, naturally makes it more difficult still. But then, you know, my dear fellow, the greater the difficulty and the danger of the strife the greater the honour and the reward of victory.
"For my own part I think that your meeting with her in the road down yonder, if not ordered by Providence, may, with all reverence, be called providential. Those emotions which you experienced on first seeing her, and for which you were inclined to reproach yourself, were after all perfectly human, and therefore natural and pardonable. I needn't tell you now that I entirely disagree with those who consider that a man should cease to be a man when he becomes a clergyman. You are young, and you are made of flesh and blood. You were once very much in love with this young lady"—there was a slight, almost imperceptible emphasis upon the "once" which somehow made Vane wince—"you might have married her, but you forewent that happiness in obedience to a conviction which would have done honour to the best of us. You would have been either more or less than human if your heart had not beaten a little harder and your blood had not flowed a little faster when you met her unexpectedly like that in a country road.
"But," he went on, sitting up in his chair and speaking with a little more emphasis, "the very fact that you so quickly discovered such a decided change in her, and that that change, moreover, struck you as being one for the worse, is to my mind a distinct proof that your paths in life have already diverged very widely."