The painting was accordingly sent in, and three days after, the whole Leonard family departed—the children for home, and the elders of the house for Cape May—and now Georgia was left to solitude and suspense once more, until, as day after day was passed, and the day approached, she began her old fashion of working herself up into one of her fevers of impatience and excitement. Her usual antidote of a long, rapid walk was followed in the city as well as in the country, and often did people pause and look in wonder after the tall, dark-robed figure that flitted so rapidly by them, whose vailed face no one ever saw.
One night, as darkness was falling over the city, Georgia found herself suddenly among a crowd of people who were passing rapidly into a church. Borne along by the throng, she was carried in, too, and half-bewildered by the crowd, and by the crash of a grand organ, and the glitter of many lights, she found herself in a pew, among thousands of others, before she quite realized where she was. She looked, and, with a half-startled air, saw she was in one of the largest churches of the city, and that it was already filled to suffocation.
She heard some persons in a seat before her whisper that an eloquent young divine (she could not catch the name) was going to address them. While they yet spoke, a tall, slight figure, robed in black, came out of the vestry, passed up the stairs, and ascended the pulpit. A silence so profound that you could have heard a pin drop in that vast multitude reigned, broken at last by a clear, thrilling voice that rang out in deep tones with the awful words from Holy Writ:
"You shall seek Me and you shall not find Me, and you shall die in your sins."
A death-like pause ensued, and every heart seemed to stand still to catch the next words. But why does Georgia start as if she had received a spear thrust? Why do her lips spring white and quivering apart? Why are her eyes fixed so wildly, so strangely on the preacher? In that moment the mystery was solved, the secret revealed—the brother of her husband stands before her. The gay, the careless, the elegant, the thoughtless Charley Wildair is a clergyman. For awhile she sat stunned by the shock, conscious that he was speaking, yet hearing not a word. Then her clouded faculties cleared, and her ears were greeted by such bursts of resistless eloquence as she had never dreamed of before. In that moment rose before her, with terrific vividness, the despairing death-bed of the sinner and the awful doom that must follow. Shuddering and terrified, she sank back, shading her face with her hands, appalled by the awful fate that might have been hers. What—what was all earthly trouble compared with that dread eternity of misery she had deserved—that awful doom that might yet be hers? Still it arose before her in all its frightful horrors, exhibited by the clarion voice of the speaker, until, wrought up to the pitch of frenzy, her trembling lips strove to form the word "Mercy." And still, as if in answer, rang out that thrilling voice with that terrific sentence of eternal doom:
"You shall seek Me and you shall not find Me, and you shall die in your sins."
The sermon was over, the people were crowding out, and she found herself half senseless kneeling in the pew, with her face hidden in her hands. An uncontrollable desire to see, to speak to him she had just heard seized her, and she sprang up, and grasping some one who stood near her, said, incoherently:
"Where is he? I must see him! Where is he gone?"
"Who?" said the startled personage she addressed.
"He who has just preached."