"May I not leave this world?" I cried; "may I not also, forgetting all things else, live for God alone?"
A sweet sober smile illumined Muriel's face as she answered, "Yea, by all means serve God, but not as a nun, good Constance. Thine I take to be the mere shadow of a vocation, if even so much as that. A cloud hath for a while obscured the sunshine of thy hopes and called up this shadow; but let this thin vapor dissolve, and no trace shall remain of it. Nay, nay, sweet one, 'tis not chafed, nor yet, except in rare instances, riven hearts which God doth call to this special consecration—rather whole ones, nothing or scantily touched by the griefs and joys which this world can afford. But I warrant thee—nay, I may not warrant," she added, checking herself, "for who can of a surety forecast what God's designs should be? But I think thou wilt be, before many years have past, a careful matron, with many children about thy apron-strings to try thy patience."
"O Muriel," I answered, "how should this be? I have made my bed, and I must lie on it. Like a foolish creature, unwittingly, or rather rashly, I have deceived Basil into thinking I do not love him; and if my face should yet recover its old fairness, he shall still think mine heart estranged."
Muriel shook her head, and said more entangled skeins than this one had been unravelled. The next day she resumed her wonted labors in the prisons and amongst the poor. Having procured means of access to Mistress Wells, she carried to her the only comfort she could now taste—the knowledge of her husband's holy, courageous end, and the reports of the last words he did utter. Then having received a charge thereunto from Mr. Genings, she discovered John Genings's place of residence, and went to tell him that the cause of his brother's coming to London was specially his love for him; that his only regret in dying had been that he was executed before he could see him again, or commend him to any friend of his own, so hastened was his death.
But this much-loved brother received her with a notable coldness; and far from bewailing the untimely and bloody end of his nearest kinsman, he betrayed some kind of contentment at the thought that he was now rid of all the persuasions which he suspected he should otherwise have received from him touching religion.
About a fortnight afterward Mr. Congleton expired. Alas! so troublesome were the times, that to see one, howsoever loved, sink peacefully into the grave, had not the same sadness which usually belongs to the like haps.
Muriel had procured a priest for to give him extreme unction—one Mr. Adams, a friend of Mr. Wells, who had sometimes said mass in his house. He also secretly came for to perform the funeral rites before his burial in the cemetery of St. Martin's church.
When we returned home that day after the funeral, this reverend gentleman asked us if we had heard any report touching the brother of Mr. Genings; and on our denial, he said, "Talk is ministered amongst Catholics of his sudden conversion."
"Sudden, indeed, it should be," quoth Muriel; "for a more indifferent listener to an afflicting message could not be met with than he proved himself when I carried to him Mr. Genings's dying words."
"Not more sudden," quoth Mr. Adams, "than St. Paul's was, and therefore not incredible."