AT THE CHURCH DOOR.
A lovely afternoon in September was drawing to its close; the shadows were long upon the pavement, and a gentle breeze brought the fragrance of heliotrope and late roses over the wall from a garden adjoining a handsome house in the old and well-known town of N——. The hall-door opened and shut behind a young woman who walked rather wearily down the steps and along the street. It was evident that she was not thinking of the sun, nor the breeze, nor the sweet breath of the flowers; she looked neither to the right nor to the left, and yet her steps seemed listless and without an aim.
Her dress was plain, plain almost to poverty, and without the slightest attempt at ornament, yet it would have been impossible to pass her without notice. She was tall and graceful, and her features were very handsome; but that was not what would have attracted your attention; there was a something which told she was a lady—not perhaps in the truest meaning of the word, as it may be applied to a servant-girl or an apple-woman whose instincts are refined and Christian; but you felt that she was well-born and well-bred, and that her tastes were such as would not well accord with her coarse dress and shabby bonnet. True, if you had been a close observer, you might have seen that her boots were very pretty, her gloves of the best kid, very fresh and unworn at the finger-tips, and it might have surprised you to see that on her ungloved hand sparkled a splendid ruby. But enough for exterior description; the face, though so fair, was clouded and preoccupied, and as she walked she drew a letter from her pocket and glanced at its contents.
"He appoints seven o'clock to meet me," she said to herself, "on the stone seat outside the Catholic church. A strange place to choose! I wish it had been somewhere else! Yet why should I care? What is that church to me more than another? And soon I shall give my promise that it shall be less than every other. It is a kind offer, a generous offer; but I will not exchange you"—here she gave a contemptuous twitch to her dress—"for a better till my wedding day. He and every one shall see that I consider myself his equal, even in these shabby clothes. O dear me! how tired I am! How that wretched child insisted on playing discords with the pedal! I will not go home, it is so far; but rest somewhere, and think how I can accept him most graciously. I might as well sit on the stone seat here outside the church; the shade of that tree looks inviting."
Agnes—for that was the name of the girl whose reverie we have put into words for the benefit of our readers—had come to the pretty church where Mr. Redfern had appointed to meet her. She sat down on the bench outside, and we will take this opportunity to tell who she was and why she waited there.
Agnes Deblois was the only child of Catholic parents; they were wealthy, and as she was their idol, she was surrounded with friends, comforts, and pleasures; with every thing, in short, that makes life bright and beautiful. She had been carefully instructed and trained in her religion by her excellent and fond mother; and it was a great misfortune to her when this pious lady died, leaving her daughter, at the age of seventeen, to the care of a father who was a negligent and unpractical Catholic. Agnes was devoted to her father, and, influenced by his example and by the ridicule of her worldly friends, she allowed herself gradually to abandon her habits of piety and the duties of her religion. After three years, during which Agnes had been engrossed by the engagements and excitements of life "in society," her father also died; when it was discovered not only that he had lived beyond his means, but that he was even largely in debt. By selling house, silver, and estate, Agnes was enabled to satisfy all the creditors, and, finding herself almost without a dollar, she looked around for her friends, whose protestations of devotion she recalled, and to whose sympathy she naturally turned. But she was shocked at the change she found even in those of whose fidelity she had felt sure.
She was offered assistance, it was true, and even a home, yet with a coldness and constraint which showed she was considered in the light of a burden. From being almost crushed by the grief of her bereavement, her spirit rose as the bitterness of her situation became apparent, and she very soon resolved to be indebted to no one either for home or for bread. Her education had been thorough and superior; for music she had a rare talent, and she found it easy to obtain as many pupils as her strength would allow her to attend to. She threw herself into her new duties with an ardor which arose from wounded pride, but which was destined to grow cool as the irksomeness of the daily routine and unloveliness of the continual presence of poverty wore upon her. It was hateful to her to be poor; to wear clothes which, however neat and even pretty she might make them, must still be plain and cheap. So she gave up all attempt at ornament, and took a bitter pleasure in wearing what was coarsest and most unattractive for her dress, though allowing herself, as she was able, what was best in such small articles as gloves, and still wearing the handsome jewels she had preserved from her former life. For this she was greatly blamed, and even reproved by those who called themselves her friends, and who were scandalized at the bad taste of wearing dresses which a beggar might despise with ornaments which, it must be confessed, were handsomer than their own; but Agnes paid no attention, and went on her own difficult and joyless path.
Formerly she had neglected her religion from carelessness and human respect; now she kept away from church because she was always tired and always sad, and because she no longer cared for the faith of her mother and of her own happy childhood. But now a wonderful thing had happened to her. She had come to this beautiful and fashionable place in the summer because her pupils were there, and because, as she took pleasure in saying, she wanted their money, and at the house of the richest and proudest of them all she had seen Mr. Redfern, a man of immense wealth, who had noticed her, found opportunities of paying her attentions, and now had asked her to marry him. She had his letter in her pocket, and she took it out once more as she sat outside the church, and read a passage from it:
"The only thing I ask of you is this: that you will give up, now and for ever, all interest in the Romish Church."