Never was the nobleness of his nature more evinced than in this letter; never grief more heartfelt, combined with a more patient endurance of the overthrow of his sole earthly happiness; never a greater or more forgiving kindness toward a faithless creature, as he deemed her, with a lingering care for her weal, whom he must needs have thought so ill deserving of his love. So much sorrow without repining, such strict charges not to marry Hubert if he was not a good Catholic and truly reconciled to the Church. But if he was indeed changed in this respect, an assent given to this marriage which had cost him, he said, many tears and many prayers for to write, more than if with his own heart's blood he had traced the words; but which, nevertheless, he freely gave, and prayed God to bless us both, if with a good conscience we could be wedded; and God forbid he should hinder it, if I had ceased for to love him, and had given to Hubert—who had already got his birthright—also a more precious treasure, the heart once his own.
"What doth your brother write to you?" I coldly said; and then Hubert gave me his letter to read.
Methinks he imagined I concealed my face from some sort of shame; and God knoweth, had I acted the part he supposed, I might well have blushed deeper than can be thought of.
This letter was like unto the other—the most touching proof of love a man could give for a woman. Forgetting himself, my dearest Basil's only care was my happiness; and firm remonstrances were blended with touching injunctions to his brother to treasure every hair of the head of one who was dearer to him than all the world beside, and to do his duty to God and to her, which if he observed, he should, mindless of all else, for ever bless him.
When I returned the missive to him, Hubert said, in a faltering voice, "Now you are free—free to be mine—free before God and man."
"Yea," I answered; "free as the dead, for I am henceforward dead to all earthly things."
"What!" he cried, startled; "your thinking is not, God shield it, to be a nun abroad?"
"Nay," I answered; and then, laying my hand on Basil's letter, I said, "If I had thought to marry you, Hubert; if at this hour I should say I could love you, I ween you would leave the house affrighted, and never return to it again."
"Is your brain turned?" he impatiently cried.
"No," I answered quietly, lifting my veil, "my face only is changed."