"I know it was wrong for him to desert his wife."
"Wrong!" How inadequate seemed that word from her pure lips!
"But," he faltered, "we must make allowances. My friend married Fran's mother in secret because she was utterly worldly—frivolous—a butterfly. Her own uncle was unable to control her—to make her go to church. Soon after the marriage he found out his mistake—it broke his heart, the tragedy of it. I don't excuse him for going away to Europe—"
"I am glad you don't. He was no true man, but a weakling. I am glad I have never been thrown with such a—a degenerate."
"But, Miss Grace," he urged pleadingly, "do you think my friend, when he went back to find her and she was gone—do you think he should have kept on hunting? Do you think, Grace, that he should have remained yoked to an unbeliever, after he realized his folly?"
There was heavenly compassion in her eyes, for suddenly she had divined his purpose in defending Fran's father. He was thinking of his own wife, and of his wife's mother and brother—how they had ceased to show sympathy in what he regarded as the essentials of life. Her silence suggested that as she could not speak without casting reflection upon Mrs. Gregory, she would say nothing, and this tact was grateful to his grieved heart.
To the degree that Grace Noir took solemn satisfaction in attending every service of the Walnut Street church, no matter what the weather, she had grown to regard non-attendants as untrue soldiers, bivouacking amidst scenes of feasting and dancing. She made nothing of Mrs. Gregory's excuse that she stayed at home with her mother—the old lady should be wheeled to the meeting-house, even if against her inclinations. As for the services being bad for Simon Jefferson's weak heart,—she did not think they would hurt his heart or that it would matter if they did. Visible, flesh-and-blood presence was needful to uphold the institution, and Grace would have given more for one body resting upright in a pew, than for a hundred members who were there only "in the spirit".
"I have been thinking of something very strange," Grace said, with a marked effort to avoid the issue lest she commit the indiscretion of blaming her employer's wife. "I remember having heard you say that when you were a young man, you left your father's home to live with a cousin in a distant town who happened to be a teacher in a college, and that you were graduated from his college. Don't you think it marvelous, this claim of Fran, who says that her father, when a young man, went to live with a cousin who was a college professor, and that he was graduated from that college? And she says that her father's father was a rich man—just as yours was—and that the cousin is dead —just as yours is."
At these piercing words, Gregory bowed his head to conceal his agitation. Could it be possible that she had guessed all and yet, in spite of all, could use that tone of kindness? It burst upon him that if he and she could hold this fatal secret in common, they might, in sweetest comradeship, form an alliance against fate itself.
She persisted: "The account that Fran gives of her father is really your own history. What does that show?"