"It will be no news to you, Miss Fountain, that Mr. Helbeck's engagement troubled his Catholic friends. I chose to take it morbidly to heart—I ventured that—that most presumptuous attack upon him." He laughed, with an affected note that made her think him odious. "But you were soon avenged. You little know, Miss Fountain, what an influence your presence at Bannisdale had upon me. It—well! it was like a rebel army, perpetually there, to help—to support, the rebel in myself. I saw the struggle—the protest in you. My own grew fiercer. Oh! those days of painting!—and always the stabbing thought, never again! I must confess even the passionate delight this has given me—the irreligious ideas it has excited. All my religious habits lost power—I could not meditate—I was always thinking of the problem of my work. Clearly I must never touch, a brush again.—For I was very soon to take orders—then to go out to missionary work. Well, I put the painting aside—I trampled on myself—I went to see my father and sister, and rejoiced in the humiliations they put upon me. Mr. Helbeck was all kindness, but he was naturally the last person I could confide in. Then, Miss Fountain, I went back, back to the Jesuit routine——"
He paused, looking instinctively for a glance from her. But she gave him none.
"And in three weeks it broke down under me for ever. I gave it up. I am a free man. Of the wrench I say nothing." He drew himself up with a shudder, which seemed to her theatrical. "There are sufferings one must not talk of. The Society have not been ungenerous. They actually gave me a little money. But, of course, for all my Catholic friends it is like death. They know me no more."
Then for the first time his companion turned towards him. Her eyelids lifted. Her lips framed rather than spoke the words, "Mr. Helbeck?"
"Ah! Mr. Helbeck—I am not mistaken, Miss Fountain, in thinking that I may now speak of Mr. Helbeck with more freedom?"
"My engagement with Mr. Helbeck is broken off," she said coldly. "But you were saying something of yourself?"
A momentary expression of dislike and disappointment crossed his face. He was of a soft, sensuous temperament, and had expected a good deal of sympathy from Miss Fountain.
"Mr. Helbeck has done what all of us might expect," he said, not without a betraying sharpness. "He has cast me off in the sternest way. Henceforth he knows me no more. Bannisdale is closed to me. But, indeed, the news from that quarter fills me with alarm."
Laura looked up again eagerly, involuntarily.
"Mr. Helbeck, by all accounts, grows more and more extreme—more and more solitary.—But of course your stepmother will have kept you informed. It was always to be foreseen. What was once a beautiful devotion, has become, with years—and, I suppose, opposition—a stern unbending passion—may not one say, a gloomy bigotry?"