[CHAPTER XXV.]
A CRISIS IN A LIFE
The dreaded interview with M. de Castella was all but over, and Adeline leaned against the straight-backed chair in the cabinet, more dead than alive, so completely had her father's words bereft her of hope and energy.
When Mr. St. John first opened the affair, Signor de Castella had felt considerably annoyed, and would not glance at the possibility of breaking the contract with de la Chasse. But the Signor, cold as he was in manner, was not, at heart, indifferent to Adeline's happiness. And when he found how entirely she was bound up in Mr. St. John, and the latter brought forth his munificent proposals and departed for England to get them triumphantly confirmed, then he began in secret to waver. But now stepped in another.
You, who read this, are of course aware that in many Roman Catholic families, especially foreign ones, the confessor exercises much influence over temporal matters as well as spiritual. And though the confessor to the Castellas, Father Marc, had not hitherto seen cause, or perhaps had opportunity, to put himself forward in such affairs, he felt himself bound to do so now. But you must not jump to a mistaken conclusion, or fancy he was one of those overbearing priests sometimes represented in works of fiction. That there are meddlers in all positions of life--in the Romish Church as well as in our Reformed one--every one knows. But Father Marc was not one of these. He was a good and conscientious man, and though an over-rigid Romanist, it was only in zeal for the Faith of his country, the religion to which he had been born and reared. No other Faith, according to his tenets, to his firm belief, would lead a soul to Heaven: and he deemed that he was acting for the best, nay, for the immortal interest of Adeline. Do not blame him! He loved the child, whom he had watched grow up from infancy. He honestly believed that to suffer Adeline to marry an Englishman and a heretic and make her home in Protestant England, would be to consign her to perdition. He therefore placed his veto upon it, a veto that might not be gainsaid, and forbid the contract to be interrupted with de la Chasse. If he interfered, with what may appear to us desperate measures, he believed the cause to be desperate which justified them; and he acted in accordance with the dictates of his own conscience; with what he deemed his duty to Adeline, to his religion, and to God.
She knew it all now: the secret of her father's obstinacy, and why she must give up Mr. St. John and marry de la Chasse. She knew that if her father consented to her heretical marriage, or if she of herself persisted in contracting it, the Curse of the Church was to alight upon her, and upon her father's house. The Curse of the Church! Adeline had been reared in all the belief and doctrines of the Romish faith, and she could no more have dared to act in defiance of that awful curse, than she would have dared to raise her hand against her own life. She leaned her head back on the uncomfortable chair, and moaned aloud in her overwhelming anguish. It might be cruel of Father Marc to have whispered of such a thing, but he had done it in his zealous love. Desperate diseases require desperate remedies.
"The alternative of a convent," she gasped, "cannot that be given me?"
"No," replied M. de Castella, who was painfully frigid throughout the interview, perhaps as a guard to his own feelings. "You must marry. Your mother and I cannot consent to lose you from our sight, as, in the will of Providence, we lost Maria. You must choose between this Englishman and him to whom you are betrothed. If you marry the Englishman, you--and I, Adeline--will be put beyond the pale of Heaven. Marry him who expects, ere three days, to be your husband, and you will lead a tranquil life here, with sure hope of a Hereafter."
"Does my mother know of this?" she asked.
"No. She will know it soon enough if your decision be against us."