“I do hope there’s a deaf and dumb saint who intercedes for girls in love!” cried Miss Hannah Gallatin impatiently. “It would be the only one who could thoroughly understand her! Evidently you think the apartment means that G. Rodney expects to cage his bird, but I think that’s by no means certain. You blind, honest little bat, it might mean anything else but that! Cicely Adair, I found out lately, accidentally dropping a book out of which a card tumbled—one of G. Rodney’s books—that he was once a Catholic!”
“Yes, he was,” Cis said carelessly. “I knew that. He doesn’t believe in any form of religion; he thinks it’s all nonsense, but I’ll learn to be a good Catholic myself, and then Rod will get straightened out.”
“Cicely Adair, look out for the man that is not true to his faith; disloyalty to his God is a mighty poor argument for his loyalty to a woman. And do your converting before, not after you marry him! Something there I don’t like; never have. I’m afraid for you, Cicely Adair. I wish I had proof—or else no doubts!” Miss Gallatin looked troubled.
Across the space of several months Jeanette Lucas’ voice reached Cis as Miss Gallatin spoke; it said again to her:
“I thought that I should cure his one defect, his indifference to religion. I know now that he was false to all things, to me as to God! Cicely Adair, you’re a Catholic girl; remember this lesson when you think of marrying.”
Cicely shivered involuntarily, and the chill of the memory of this warning from the girl whom she had revered, then pitied, drove out the quick anger with which she had heard Miss Gallatin’s last words, and made her answer quietly:
“I think you mean to be good to me, Miss Gallatin, and I appreciate it, but, please, nothing more against Rodney Moore to me. I ought not to have let you say one word! He loves me, as I love him, and he trusts me as I trust him. I don’t know what he will say when I tell him that someone warned me against him and that I let them—of course I must confess it to him! I shall marry him. There isn’t anything else to do when the whole world would be black-empty without him! Even if I’m to be unhappy, still I must marry him. But I’m not afraid of being unhappy. How silly, how wrong, but still more how silly, to suspect people without a grain of reason! You haven’t the least proof of Rod’s being anything but what I’ve found him, the best, as he is the dearest, cleverest, kindest, biggest, truest man in all the whole wide world!”
“Forgive my meddling, Miss Adair,” said Miss Gallatin humbly. “No one ever rescued a girl in love from her fate, even though she brought tons of proof against the man. And I have none; you’re right. Nevertheless—But I’m to say no more! I like you, my dear; I truly like you, and I’ve known what it was to love a man madly, trust him utterly, and find him false and evil! If G. Rodney leaves my house for that apartment and you’re not domiciled in it, will you come to board with me? I’d like to have you under my roof. And the day may come when you’ll find queer, lean, ugly Hannah Gallatin better than no one. Like Mrs. Wallace’s?”
“Oh, yes; it’s all right,” said Cis, glad to be let off from answering the previous questions. “It’s clean, and she gives us lots of good food, but—Mrs. Wallace’s women boarders are not all my fancy might paint them!”
“Fancy sketches ’twould be!” returned Miss Gallatin. “Women boarders are a species by themselves; idle, censorious, meddlesome. Hers aren’t peculiar to Mrs. Wallace; she’s not to blame for ’em; mine are just the same! They’re all alike, mostly, and when they’re different from the rest, heaven help the different ones! The things I’ve seen women, who were supposed to be ladies when they were away from a boarding house table, do to get the hearts of the celery—gracious! I’m sure those at Mrs. Wallace’s pick at you; you’re too gay and independent to escape! Too young, besides! Well, that would be the same anywhere, but come to me if ever there’s a chance. You can’t come while G. Rodney’s in the house; I won’t have you! Now, good-bye, my dear! I do like you, and, somehow, the thought of you anxiously haunts me. Believe me, if you are happy with G. Rodney and can bring him back to his faith, if he’ll be to you what you expect him to be, no one will be more glad than queer Hannah Gallatin! So don’t hold a grudge in your memory of me, and come to see me some Sunday—if you have spare time!”