And here the sisters dropped the subject.
As for Helen, she still lingered in the silent graveyard. She felt, with the unreasoning passion of youth, that the dead gave her more comfort than the living. Lois had scarcely dared to speak to her since that talk in their sitting-room, and Dr. Howe's silence was like a pall over the whole house. So she had come here to be alone, and try to fancy what her husband and her uncle had said to each other, for Dr. Howe had refused to enter into the details of his visit.
His interview with her husband had only resulted in a greater bitterness on the part of the rector. He had waited for John Ward's answer to his letter, and its clear statement of the preacher's position, and its assertion that his convictions were unchangeable, gave him no hope that anything could be accomplished without a personal interview. Discussion with a man who actually believed that this cruel and outrageous plan of his, was appointed by God as a means to save his wife's soul, was absurd and undignified, but it had to be. The rector sighed impatiently as he handed her husband's letter to Helen.
"He is lost to all sense of propriety; apparently he has no thought of what he owes you. Well, I shall go to Lockhaven to-morrow."
"It is all for me!" Helen said. "Oh, uncle Archie, if you would just understand that!"
Dr. Howe gave an explosive groan, but he only said, "Tell Lois to pack my bag. I'll take the early train. Oh, Helen, why can't you be like other women? Why do you have to think about beliefs? Your mother never doubted things; why do you? Isn't it enough that older and wiser people than you do not question the faith?"
At the last moment he begged her to accompany him. "Together, we can bring the man to his senses," he pleaded, and he secretly thought that not even the hardness and heartlessness of John Ward could withstand the sorrow in her face. But she refused to consider it.
"Have you no message for him?" he asked.
"No," she answered.
"Sha'n't I tell him how you—miss him, Helen?"