“The Church is the conscience of all her erring children,” replied Father Antoine, “and disobedience is at the peril of one's soul. I lay it upon you, as the command of the Church, that you return, my daughter. You have sinned most grievously.”
“Oh,” said Hetty, with apparent irrelevance. “I understand now. You took me for a Catholic.”
It was Father Antoine's turn to stare.
“Why then, if you are not, came you to me?” he said sternly. “I am here only as priest.”
Hetty clasped her hands, and said pleadingly:
“Oh no! not only as priest: you are a good man. My father always said so. We were not Catholics; and I could not be of any other religion than my father's, now he is dead,” (here Hetty unconsciously touched a chord in Antoine Ladeau's breast, which gave quick response): “but I recollected how he trusted you, and I said, if I can hide myself in that little village, Father Antoine will be good to me for my father's sake. But you must not tell me to go back to my home: no one can judge about that but me. The thing I have done is best: I shall not go back. And, if you will not keep my secret and be my friend, I will go away at once and hide myself in some other place still farther away, and will ask no one again to be my friend, ever till I die!”
Father Antoine was perplexed. All the blood of ancient knighthood which was in his veins was stirred with chivalrous desire to help Hetty: but, on the other hand, both as man and as priest, he felt that she had committed a great wrong, and that he could not even appear to countenance it. He studied Hetty's face: in spite of its evident marks of pain, it was as indomitable as rock.
“You have the old Huguenot soul, my daughter,” he said. “Antoine Ladeau knows better than to try to cause you to swerve from the path you have chosen. But the good God can give you light: it may be that he has directed you here to find it in his true Church. Be sure that your father was a good Catholic at heart.”
“Oh, no! he wasn't,” exclaimed Hetty, impetuously. “There was nothing he disliked so much as a Catholic. He always said you were the only Catholic he ever saw that he could trust”
Father Antoine's rosy face turned rosier. He was not used among his docile Canadians to any such speech as this. The unvarnished fashions of New England honesty grated on his ear.