She read all that the librarian had recommended, and much more. It was some six months later that she fully realised that her faith was gone. There came a time when her simple appeals to the Virgin stuck in her throat; when she realised that her beloved masters, if they could have seen her telling a rosary at the foot of her altar, would have thought her a fool.
There was no struggle, for the work was done, and finally. But her grief was deep and bitter. Religion had been a strong inherited instinct, and it had been three fourths of her existence for nearly eighteen years. She felt as if the very roots of her spirit had been torn up and lay wilting and shrivelling in the cold light of her reason. She was terrified at her new position. How was she, a mere girl, to think for herself, to make her way through life, which every great writer told her was a complex and crucifying ordeal, with no guide but her own poor reason?
For the first time she felt her isolation. She had no one to go to for sympathy, no one to advise her. Of all she knew, her parents were the last she could have approached on any subject involving the surrender of her reticence.
She lost interest in her books, and brooded, her mind struggling toward will-o'-the-wisps in a fog-bank, until she could endure her solitary position no longer; she felt that she must speak to some one or her brain would fall to ashes. Her aunt was still in Santa Barbara, and showed no disposition to return. A priest was out of the question. There was no one but Colonel Belmont. Magdaléna knew nothing of his private life: not a whisper had reached her secluded ears; but she doubted if religion were his strong point. But he had always been kind, and she knew him to be clever. It took her a week to make up her mind to speak to him and to decide what to say; but when her decision was finally reached, she walked through the connecting gardens one evening with firm tread and set lips.
She entered the house by a side door and went to the library, where she knew Colonel Belmont smoked his after-dinner cigar when at home. A cordial voice answered her knock. When she entered he rose and came forward with the graceful hospitality which never failed him in the moments of his liveliest possession, and with the acute interest which anything feminine and young never failed to inspire.
"Well, honey!" he exclaimed, kissing her warmly and handing her to a chair; "you might have done this before. I'm such a lonely childless old widower."
"Oh!" said Magdaléna, with contrition; "I never thought you'd care to see me." She could not know that he seldom permitted himself to be alone.
"Well, now you know it, you'll come oftener, won't you? Have you heard from my baby lately? I had a letter a yard long this morning. She can write!"
"I had one too." She hesitated a moment, then determined to speak at once. She could not hold this nor any man's attention in ordinary conversation, and she wanted to finish before she wearied him.
"Uncle Jack," she said, "I've come to see you about something in particular. I know so few people, or I wouldn't bore you—"