The theologian smiled. “Oh, the dear lady is perfectly happy! In fact, I think she’s really happier than when she was worrying herself about Vennie’s future.”
“I don’t like these convents,” remarked Luke.
“Few people like them,” said the papal champion, “who have never entered them.
“I’ve never seen an unhappy nun. They are almost too happy. They are like children. Perhaps they’re the only persons in existence who know what continual, as opposed to spasmodic, happiness means. The happiness of sanctity is a secret that has to be concealed from the world, just as the happiness of certain very vicious people has,—for fear there should be no more marriages.”
“Talking of marriages,” remarked Luke, “I’d give anything to know how our friend Gladys is getting on with Clavering. I expect his attitude of heroic pity has worn a little thin by this time. I wonder how soon the more earthly side of the shield will wear thin too! But—poor dear girl!—I do feel sorry for her. Fancy having to listen to the Reverend Hugh’s conversation by night and by day!
“I sent her a picture post-card, the other afternoon, from Yeoborough—a comic one. I wonder if she snapped it up, and hid it, before her husband came down to breakfast!”
The jeering tone of the man jarred a little on Mr. Taxater’s nerves.
“I think I understand,” he thought to himself, “why it is that he praises the aristocracy.”
To change the conversation, he reverted to Miss Seldom’s novitiate.
“Vennie was very indignant with me for remaining so long in London, but I am glad now that I did. None of our little arrangements—eh, my friend?—would have worked out so well as her Napoleonic directness. That shows how wise it is to stand aside sometimes and let things take their course.”