"Paul must have been a great comfort to you."
"Believe me, Mr. Radcliffe," she urged, still weeping. "I would have spared you this refusal. I will not deny that before we left Rome, I began to suspect the nature of your sentiments; and assumed a coldness foreign to my feelings in order that you might understand that, however much I admired you as a Christian gentleman, nothing farther could take place."
"But why? If there are obstacles, I can overcome them. I am at the age when men desire a home and family; but having found the only one I ever desired to marry, I am willing to wait if you think it too soon after your husband's death."
She shuddered. "You are mistaken, Sir Jones," she faltered, every particle of color vanishing from her face and lips. "In justice to you I ought to confess that had circumstances been different I might have yielded to your wishes; but the man who once called me wife still lives, though just sinking into the grave. Nearly four years ago the law sundered the tie; and when I tell you that I have just come from his death-bed, the death-bed of an humble penitent, clinging for pardon to the cross of his Saviour, you will not wonder that I have no desire to speak of past trials."
"Is it possible," exclaimed the gentleman, "that the invalid for whom you have denied yourself the society and admiration of the most eminent persons in Rome, ever bore such a relation to you? I understand your character well enough to be sure no trivial reasons would gain your consent to a divorce; and you have treated him as if he were your best friend."
"Did not our Saviour, whom we propose to take for an example, do this? Did he not return blessing for cursing; kindness for unkindness; and shall not we, with far less provocation, endeavor to do likewise? But indeed you are giving me too much credit. Surely no one would see a fellow countryman suffering from disease and privation, without hastening to his relief; and I have been rewarded," she continued, turning her humid eyes, beaming with holy fervor, on his, "by witnessing the most remarkable display of divine grace, that has ever come to my knowledge."
"With my whole heart I sympathize with your joy," he responded, warmly. "Will the gentleman remain in Rome?"
"If he lives till June, which I consider doubtful, he will return to the United States, where his parents reside. I shall probably never see him more."
Possibly the gentleman made his own inference from the fact that she had left the invalid, when he might live for months. At any rate his spirits rose; and she thought he had never been more brilliant in conversation, than during their return home.