“And Robert?” said the older woman. “What about Robert?”
“His father was a Dominican. The Church will have her own again. Be quite sure of that!
‘Thy justice is like the great mountains.
Thy judgments are a great deep.’
In God's way, all will come right. Every debt must be paid.”
Although they had arranged to journey back to London the following day, the woods and gardens looked so fair, the peace of that house was so great, that they lingered there till Wednesday. Brigit was unusually silent. She sat for hours at the library window looking across the Channel toward France, her countenance drawn and white, all its loveliness departed.
Once she spoke—
“I know that Robert is in sorrow.”
“Are you anxious? Shall I write?” asked Pensée, secretly troubled also.
“No, I am not anxious. There is sorrow, but I am not anxious.”
Her room adjoined Pensée's, and, in the night, Pensée, sleepless, heard her walking to and fro, with even steps, till sunrise. When they met in the morning, Brigit seemed to have aged by ten years. Her youth returned, but the character of her face had altered for ever. She was never called pretty again. It was said that she varied and depended wholly on her moods. She could make herself anything, but nature had given her little more than a pair of eyes, a nose, and a mouth—indifferent good. Lady Fitz Rewes was appalled at the transformation. Remembering stories of the last dreadful touches of consumption, she feared for the girl's health. “She will die before long,” she thought. But death can occur more than once in one life. The passing away of every strong emotion means a burial and a grave, a change, and a resurrection. The tearful, dusty, fiery, airy process must be endured seventy times seven and more, and more again—from everlasting to everlasting. And the cause is nothing, the motives are nothing, the great, great affliction and the child's little woe pass alike through the Process—for the Process belongs to the eternal law, whereas the rest is of the heart's capacity.