“I want them to know what it tells them,” said Cis, and Mr. Lancaster noted that she made no disclaimer of his praise, as she made no pose as a singer. She did what she was asked to do as best she could; there it began, there it ended.
“Of course they can’t understand the Latin, Venite adoremus Dominum, but they are all baptized, and I think we catch a little Latin then, don’t you? It seems to stick to us. I know Latin never seems like something I don’t understand, even when I’m not understanding it, and at high school it never bothered me a bit.”
“Do you know the Missal?” asked Anselm Lancaster, interested in this Cis, suddenly friendly toward him and at ease with him.
“Miss Braithwaite has been showing it to me, and all about the colors, and the vestments’ meaning; I’m so glad that she has!” cried Cis eagerly. “It’s so splendid, so beautiful, so big and so old! It’s as if I’d been a miserable little scrap of a beggar girl and someone had taken me into a palace with rooms and rooms, and told me it was all mine! Do you know, Mr. Lancaster, it’s scandalous to confess it, but I always thought there was just one Mass; every day the same, three hundred and sixty-five times a year. And here all these collects and prefaces—mercy!”
Cis waved her hands as she ended; her delight in recovering her inheritance was unmistakable.
“Now I know what Santa—I mean St. Nicholas!—must bring you!” cried Anselm Lancaster, exchanging a glance of pleasure with Miss Braithwaite.
Weary, but triumphant, having brought “her ragamuffins’ Christmas tree” to a successful conclusion, Miss Braithwaite took her guests home in her coupé to dine on Christmas Eve. It was another Cis from the one of the night before who sat, pale, with drooping eyes, in her golden gown with its slender line of brown fur, opposite to Mr. Lancaster, talking little, eating indifferently, her face grave, rather than sad, her smile sweet and ready, with a kind of friendly patience new to Cis.
Miss Braithwaite saw that Anselm watched her, and she, also, watched her covertly. The girl was changing fast; she was growing, deepening, expanding. At this rate she would soon be a gracious, attractive and valuable woman.
A thought new to her mind occurred to Miss Braithwaite, but she instantly dismissed it. Anselm Lancaster had seen many lovely and lovable women, in many lands; Cicely Adair could not attract him beyond his sympathetic interest in a girl who had done what she had done, had been faithful to the cause nearest his heart.
And if Cicely had been capable of attracting such a man as the scholarly and accomplished Anselm Lancaster, he was so far from her thoughts in this regard that she would never put forth the innocent wiles which are every girl’s for the man whom she feels may love her, by which she awakens and feeds his attraction, according to the plan of the Creator Who made them male and female. Cis withdrew from Mr. Lancaster as a rule, as from one outside her orbit, and when she approached him it was with that admiration and trust that frankly announced her sense of remoteness. Yet it was a sweet, a womanly Cis, with new depths in her eyes, and strength and goodness being graven upon her pale face, who sat so quietly across from Anselm Lancaster in her golden, brown-furred gown that Christmas eve at dinner.