The Countess raised her eyes with interest to his face. He was in earnest, he knew of what he was speaking, and she meekly replied at once,—
"No, never."
"Then you could not turn from what you never knew, or saw, or felt. You are not an apostate, but a poor lost sinner, not more astray now than always, and needing pity and salvation. You disregarded God in prosperity and happiness, but He will not reject you in your need and sorrow. Try Him, dear Countess, and He will in no wise cast you out."
"Guy Falconer," said the unhappy mourner with awakening energy, "do you mean to say that the great good God can have anything to do with me excepting in terrible judgment?"
Guy's answer was from "the word of the Lord, which endureth for ever." Contemplations of pity, invitations of love, assurances of pardon, winding as it were a string of pearls around her; silencing objections, meeting doubts, soothing fears, and simply resolving all into the one intelligible proposition, "Will you take this salvation and have peace, or will you refuse it and remain miserable for ever?"
"Oh, if I may, I will, for I am intensely wretched. I know now the meaning of despair."
Then a Psalm of David in his trouble spoke of anguish and of hope, and so sweetly fell the balm over the wounded spirit, so greedily opened the heart to the hitherto unheeded truths of Divine revelation, that a manifest change passed over the clouded brow and tear-worn face; and eagerly taking Guy's Bible from his hands,—
"You will leave me this?" she said. "Such a thing may not be procured in Rome, and you can soon obtain another."
"But may it not be seen and taken from you?" asked Guy, with some perception of the danger.
"Perhaps not, if I am careful, until I have done with it," she said. "And if I can, I will return it to you then, and you will like to have back the lamp which may yet light my dreary path to the heaven it tells of. And now, dear friend, one favour more. Pray for me—and my husband. Oh, that we had thought of God in our past happy days—so few, so wickedly ended! Oh, Guy, if ever you see a fellow creature in danger of being misled by affection or any other snare towards this religion of hollow shows and blighting treachery, use my sad experience to warn; and bring to the front at once that real chief object which Rome hides until the last, the secret of her power, the essence of her existence—the confessional. It is no means of Divine consolation; it is a human contrivance, by means of which a proud domineering priesthood may enslave and rule the world. I see it all now, but not until I have become its victim."