To-day, Althea is the happy wife of Hubert Lisle and the honored mistress of Kennons, which is bright and beautiful again with sweet woman's presence.
Two obstacles to the union of Hubert and Althea had disappeared. She had been proved to be matrimonially free, and he had become, from study and conviction, a full believer in her faith, of which he made open profession. The fact that they were cousins still remained. As there were considerable delays in the consummation of the marriage, it was doubtless owing to the smoothing away of this difficulty. And as both parties hold the Holy Father in most grateful and loving remembrance, and their most cherished design is to make him a visit at his prison in the Vatican, it is probable that a dispensation from Rome severed the last link of obstruction, and permitted Father Ryan, willingly at last, to tie the Gordion Knot.
Arriving at Kennons, Althea, of course, paid her respects to Mrs. Lisle at Thornton Hall. She found her in a deplorable situation. A seated cancer upon the face was eating away her life, as it had already destroyed every vestige of her former beauty.
She had great difficulty in prevailing upon servants to attend her. She was so irritable and so offensive that even money could not purchase aid.
And what did Althea? Sacrificed every ill-feeling, overcame repulsion, put up with taunts and cross words, and waited on Thornton Rush's mother as if she had been her own. And this in the happy beginning of her wedded life with Hubert Lisle. And what reward had she? None in this life, save the consciousness of having struggled to overcome nature, to render good for evil, and to perform that loving charity which our Saviour commended in the Samaritan, and ever inculcates in His Church.
Notwithstanding Althea's patient, persistent efforts, Rusha Lisle, having hardened her heart, died in her sins.
To Althea, who stood above her dying bed, she whispered hoarsely:
"You have done all this for the sake of my property. I understood all. You will find out I wasn't fooled up to the last. You couldn't cheat me with your quiet, gentle ways; ha! ha!" and the wretched woman went out in the night of death, comprehending not the sweet, Christian life of such as Althea, but believing all natures dark and cruel as her own. It was from her own she drew her judgment of another.
She had bequeathed all her property to an idle cousin, whom it will but accelerate in his downward course of idleness and dissipation.
Arrangements had all been made for a visit to Europe, and particularly to Rome, as soon as possible after Mrs. Lisle's death. Here, again, was a disappointment.