“I hope you’re talking of Cis Adair?” she cried.
“As it happens, I was,” said Miss Braithwaite.
“At least I’m a fortunate girl,” said Cis quietly.
Father Morley smiled at her with genuine admiration.
“It is always a lucky person who may truthfully be called splendid; assuming that it is luck that carves character, which is at least open to debate.”
“My funny little character lay down and let two skillful pairs of hands carve it,” said Cis with a grateful smile for these two people who had such a large part in her recent molding.
The summer passed in the way Miss Braithwaite had planned, a summer of such delight to Cis that each night when she lay down to sleep she wondered if it were really she, Cicely Adair, who was passing through scenes of natural beauty, such as she had never seen, in a luxurious car, with a companion who enhanced every beauty by her talk, linking it with other beauty, playing upon it with her wit and wisdom. When the mood was upon them they halted in a fine hotel, where Cis came into contact with a world that she had not known; where at night she danced in her pretty, thin frocks, her glorious hair the observed of every eye, moving to orchestras that played perfect dance music perfectly.
The girl drank deep of youthful joy and blossomed under it. She moved with a new grace added to her natural lissom, free carriage, and her face, alive with the interests filling her quick brain, transformed by suffering largely outlived, a temptation conquered, a soul at peace and knowing its way, was so attractive that no one ever stopped to consider whether or not she was beautiful.
Anselm Lancaster had fulfilled his promise and had joined Miss Braithwaite on the north shore, beyond Boston, in July. His roadster sometimes followed, sometimes preceded Miss Braithwaite’s large car, driven by her man, and Paul Ralph Randolph, the convert whom older Catholics were honoring for his sacrifices for conscience, with the ready admiration those born in the Church are quick to accord a convert, was Anselm Lancaster’s companion on the trip. Sometimes Miss Braithwaite rode with Anselm, Cis and Mr. Randolph in the big car; sometimes Cis went with Anselm in the roadster, while Miss Braithwaite welcomed Mr. Randolph to a place beside her and to the profound satisfaction which her wise talk gave the young man, hard beset on the new-old road, from which he had no temptation to turn back.
Thus they went through the loveliness of the Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine coasts, turned off into the White Mountain region, but omitted for this time the Canadian possibility. Thus they made their way leisurely down again, through the Berkshires, back to Beaconhite, just as the children were trooping to school, and the hint of summer’s passing, autumn’s approach, was in the air.