"I am happy, Monsignor, beyond belief," with a contented sigh. "It would be too much to expect perfect happiness. Yet that is within my reach. If I were only free to marry Honora Ledwith."
"I heard of that too," said the priest meditatively. "Has she any regard for you?"
"As a brother. How could I have asked any other love? And I am rich in that. Since there is no divorce for Catholics, I could not let her see the love which burned in me. I had no hope."
"And she goes into the convent, I believe. You must not stand in God's way."
"I have not, though I delayed her going because I could not bear to part from her. Willingly I have resigned her to God, because I know that in His goodness, had I been free, He would have given her to me."
Monsignor paused as if struck by the thought and looked at him for a moment.
"It is the right spirit," was his brief comment.
He loved this strange, incomprehensible man, who had stood for five years between his adopted people and their enemies in many a fight, who had sought battle in their behalf and heaped them with favors. His eyes saw the depth of that resignation which gave to God the one jewel that would have atoned for the horrid sufferings of the past. If he were free! He thought of old Lear moaning over dead Cordelia.
She lives! If it be so,
It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows
That ever I have felt.
"It is the right spirit," he repeated as he considered the matter. "One must not stand in the way of a soul, or in the way of God. Yet were you free, where would be the advantage? She is for the convent, and has never thought of you in the way of love."