“Blame you?” he began. “Respect religion? Yes, I do; and respect it so much that sooner than see you take those solemn vows upon you, knowing what I do, I would break my oath a hundred times, and feel I was doing right.”
Georgie’s breath came pantingly, and the great drops of sweat stood around her lips, as she asked:
“What do you propose to do?”
He did not answer her question directly, but went on to say:
“I do not profess to be good myself, or to have the first principles of goodness, but my mother, who died there in that bed”—and he pointed to where Annie lay—“knew what religion was, and lived it every day; and when she died, there was a peace and a glory around her death-bed, which would not be around yours or mine, were we to die to-night. I am not judging harshly. By their fruits ye shall know them. He said so,—the man Jesus, whom mother loved and leaned upon, just as really as she ever leaned on me, and whom she taught Annie to love and pray to, until He is as much her companion when she is alone, as you are when you are with her. Georgie, there is something needed before one kneels at that altar, as you propose doing,—something which you do not possess. You do not care for the thing in and of itself. You have some selfish object in view, and I will not be a party to the deception.”
“Will you drag me from the altar, or tear the bishop’s hands from my head?” Georgie asked, beginning to grow both alarmed and angry at her brother, who replied:
“No; but this I will do: If you go to confirmation, and if before or after it Roy Leighton asks you to be his wife, and you do not tell him the whole truth, I will do it for you. He shall not be deceived.”
“And your oath?” Georgie asked, in a choking voice.
“I break my oath, and do God service in breaking it,” Jack answered.
And then there was silence between them for ten minutes or more, and no sound was heard except the occasional dropping of a dead coal into the pan, and the low, regular breathing of the little child, so terribly in the way of the woman who had so unexpectedly been brought to bay.