He was provokingly serene.
"Well, let me give you another reason for silence respecting Lady Lorrimer. Your mamma has specially requested me to keep silence on the subject; and in your case, Miss Ethel, her daughter, can I consider that request otherwise than as a command?"
"Not comprehending casuistry, I don't quite see how your promise to papa, to observe silence respecting the differences of the two Churches, is less binding than your promise to mamma of silence respecting Lady Lorrimer."
"Will you allow me to answer that sarcasm?" he asked, flushing a little.
"How I hate hypocrisy and prevarication!" I repeated, rising even above my old level of scorn.
"I have been perfectly direct," he said, "upon that subject; for the reason I have mentioned, I can't and won't speak."
"Then for the present, I think, we shall talk upon no other," I said, getting up, going out of the room, and treating him at the door to a haughty little bow.
So we parted for that day.
I understood Mr. Carmel, however; I knew that he had acted as he always did when he refused to do what other people wished, from a reason that was not to be overcome; and I don't recollect that I ever renewed my attack. We were on our old terms in a day or two. Between the stanzas of Tasso, often for ten minutes unobserved, he talked upon the old themes—eternity, faith, the Church, the saints, the Blessed Virgin. He supplied me with books; but this borrowing and lending was secret as the stolen correspondence of lovers.
I have thought over that strange period of my life: the little books that wrought such wonders, the spell of whose power is broken now; the tone of mind induced by them, by my solitude, my agitations, the haunting affections of the dead; and all these influences re-acting again upon the cold and supernatural character of Mr. Carmel's talk. My exterior life had been going on, the rural monotony of Malory, its walks, its boating, its little drives; and now the dawning ambitions of a more vulgar scene, the town life, the excitement of a new world were opening. But among these realities, ever recurring, and dominating all, there seemed to be ever present a stupendous vision!