"You have gained a prize matrimonially."
Justin's face glowed. "I am not a man of easy speech," he said, simply, "but I can speak freely to you, and I know you will be interested in hearing that no opinion you can form of my wife will be too high a one. I wish I could describe to you her gentleness and amiability. Little by little she has undertaken the duties of a wife that I was slow to urge upon her. I wished to keep her a happy girl for a time, but the torture of leaving her father brought on a crisis. She began to ask questions, to examine herself, to study me and my relations to her, and now she has put girlhood far behind her, and is getting a firm grasp of things material and spiritual."
"Religion and love," said Miss Gastonguay, with a sigh, "you have both,—or think you have. You ought to be happy."
"We are," said Justin. Then he was reminded of a duty. He first glanced about the room. Captain Veevers's head was bent over the draught-board. He was beating Aurelia now at every game, for her blue eyes had been wandering distractedly toward the music-room ever since Mr. Huntington had sauntered there.
Derrice was engrossed in a book of old prints, and smiled to herself at quaint gods and goddesses riding on clouds, and surrounded by suites of attendants in mid-air.
"Little idiot," said Miss Gastonguay, wrinkling her brow in Aurelia's direction. "Wears her heart on her sleeve. The women here make a simpleton of that minister just because he has legs as long as stilts and hair as pretty as a wig."
"Miss Gastonguay, will you pardon me if I make a suggestion?"
"You may make it,—I don't promise to act on it."
"You have taken a liking to this man," said Justin, earnestly; "you who rarely entertain ministers of any denomination."
"Ministers,—I detest them all! The same type: men old in the work, or fledglings fresh from the theological seminaries,—strict, narrow-minded, uninteresting, knowing nothing outside their denomination, whatever it happens to be, and yet dripping with conceit. Why, this man can talk. He has travelled, he understands music, books, pictures—"