"That was your temper!"
"Just so. Our faults generally bring their own punishment."
"We heard you were in an awful passion at Madame Baret's," remarked Rose, who plunged into things irrelevant without mercy.
"I thought I had cause to be. I thought so then. I do not know the reason now why she rejected me."
"Mary Carr will tell you that. Ill-fated Adeline! She would have given her poor life to have been allowed to whisper it to you then, to justify herself in your eyes. The fact is," added Rose, after a pause, "the Church interfered to prevent the marriage, and Adeline was sworn to silence on the crucifix. I did not know it until today. She thought of you until the last, Mr. St. John, and in her dying moments got permission from her father for the truth to be disclosed to you. Mary was charged with it."
Mr. St. John's eyes blazed up with an angry light. "Then I know that was the work of Father Marc!"
"I dare say it was. He was very fond of Adeline, and no doubt thought her marriage with a heretic would be perdition here and hereafter. I don't see that you can blame him: you would have done the same in his place, had you been true to your creed. Father Marc's one of the best gossipers living. We saw a great deal of him in Adeline's sick-room, after you left. I fell in love with the charming old père."
Would she ever be serious! The question might have crossed Mr. St. John at a less bitter moment.
"And I think his gossip did Adeline good," continued Rose. "It was a sort of break to her misery. How could you have doubted her--have doubted for a single moment, whatever your passionate rage might have been, that her whole love was yours?"
How indeed? But perhaps in his inmost heart he never had doubted it. He sat there now, bearing the bitter weight of remembrance as he best might, his eyes looking back into the past, his delicate lips drawn in to pain.