“I implore you, Father, to pray for me, and to hear my confession, if you possibly can.”
“Certainly, I cannot hear you,” said the priest. “But this is what I will do. Wear this Agnus Dei, and perhaps God will have mercy on you for the sake of this, and afford you time for penance. Understand, however, I do not give it to you in order to encourage you in your bad purpose, but that you may wear it with all reverence and respect, and perhaps be moved to obedience.”
Robert thanked him, accepting the gift in a right spirit. His self-will, however, was aroused. He had determined to fight Castrillon, and fight he would.
CHAPTER XXI
Sara awoke that same morning with a foreboding heart. She wrote a letter to Reckage postponing his call, and another to Pensée Fitz Rewes, asking her to be at home that afternoon. At half-past two the young lady drove up, in her brougham, to the widow's door in Curzon Street. The blinds were down, and the house gave every indication that its owner was not in London. Sara, however, was admitted, and Pensée received her in a little room, hung with lilac chintz and full of porcelain, at the back of the house. Pensée, wearing a loose blue robe, seemed over-excited and sad—with that sadness which seems to fall upon the soul as snow upon water. She was reclining on the sofa, reading a worn copy of Law's Serious Call which had belonged to the late Viscount, and bore many of his pencil-marks. This in itself was to Sara a sign of some unusual melancholy in her friend.
“Why,” she said, kissing her soft, pale cheek, “why didn't you let me know that you had returned? I thought you were still in Paris.”
“My dear,” said Pensée, sitting up with a sudden movement and supporting herself on her two hands. “I am no longer my own mistress. I have become a puppet—a marionette: a kind of lady-in-waiting—a person to whom women talk when they have nothing to say, and to whom men talk when they have nothing to do.”
Sara chose a seat and studied the speaker with a new curiosity. She was charming; vexation gave humanity to her waxen features, and the flash in her eyes suggested hitherto unsuspected fires in her temperament, “She has more spirit than I gave her credit for,” thought Sara, and she added, “Darling!” aloud.