"Then what is your antidote—your gospel?" asked Olive.
"Is there the one or the other?" asked Ricordo.
The party went on quietly for a few minutes. Ricordo seemed to be thinking deeply; now and then he lifted his eyes for a passing glance at his companions.
Again Olive Castlemaine thought of Leicester. Memories of those days which he spent at The Beeches came rushing back to her. She thought of the happiness which was hers, when she hoped and prayed that she should be the means whereby the man she loved should be brought to faith—to God. In some subtle way which she could not understand, the stranger made him real, ay, and more, he made her feel that she had been harsh and unfair to the man whose wife she had promised to be. After all, was it not her pride he had wounded? Moreover, Ricordo had interested her in himself, in a way that she had been interested in no other man for a long time. It was not so much because of what he said. Rather, it lay in the fascination of the man himself. He made such as Herbert Briarfield seem small and commonplace. She felt sure that he had lived in a realm of thought and being to which the young squire was a stranger.
The essence of interest is mystery. It is rather in the things not seen, than in the things seen, that fascination lies. We are for ever longing to explore new regions, to tread ground hitherto untrodden. The secret chamber of a house is of infinitely more interest than those chambers which are open to inspection; that is why we care little about those people in whose life there is no secret chamber of thought and experience.
"I wonder you don't write a book, Signor Ricordo," said Briarfield presently.
"And why, Mr. Briarfield?"
"You must have a wonderful story to tell."
"Yes, a wonderful story, perhaps; but would you have me lay open my soul to the gaze of the vulgar crowd?"
"Other men have."