The page withdrew, and Calverley, turning to the monk, asked hastily if he might reckon on his friendship.
"Thomas Calverley," replied John, "I believe you do love my sister, but I cannot force her inclinations;—I will not even strive to bias her mind; there is a sympathy in hearts predestined to unite, which attracts them towards each other;—if that secret sympathy exist not between you, ye are not destined to become as one."
"Then you will not seek to win her to my love," asked Calverley, impatiently.
"I will tell her," returned the monk, "that a love so devoted, so disinterested, deserves in return an affection as pure: but if, after all this, her heart still prefers the yeoman Holgrave, I will say no more."
"And, think you, I shall endure rejection without an effort?"
"It is now too late! Why, if your happiness rested upon her, did you defer declaring your love till the moment when she had promised to become the wife of another? Know you not, Thomas Calverley, that even as the rays of the bright sun dissolve the glittering whiteness of the winter snow, just so do kind words and patient love enkindle warm feelings in the bosom of the coldest virgin, and awaken sympathies in her heart that else might for ever unconsciously have slumbered."
"You talk strange language," replied Calverley in a voice that had lost all its assumed gentleness. "But—remember—I have not sought your sister's love to be thus baffled—remember!—--" Calverley was here interrupted by a quick knocking at the door.
"Remember, father John," he continued, pausing ere he unclosed the door, and speaking rapidly, "that mine is not the love of a boy—that Thomas Calverley is not one whom it is safe to trifle with—that Margaret is a bondwoman—and that her freedom is in my hands—remember!"
He repeated the last word in a tone of menace, and with a look that seemed to dare the monk to sanction the union of his sister with Holgrave. He opened the door, but, ere he passed through, his eye caught an expression of proud contempt flashing in the dark hazel eyes, and curving in the half-smiling lip of the man he had thus defied;—and prudence whispered, that he had not properly estimated the character of the priest.