It was true. There was nothing to keep them till noon, except their engagement with the ladies of Mr. Yorke’s family, and it was certainly for Dick to say whether that should be kept. There was some discussion
on the subject, but Dick was inexorable, and the captain yielded. He wrote a note of explanation and apology to Mrs. Yorke; and so it happened that, when that lady’s messenger reached the wharf in the morning, the Halcyon was miles below, standing out through the Narrows, with a blue, sunny sea stretching in front of her straight to the South Pole. On the deck sat Dick Rowan, leaning on the rail, and watching the foam toss and drop, toss and drop, with a lulling motion, like the to-and-fro of white, mesmerizing hands. And the face that watched that motion looked half-mesmerized, pale and dreamy, with only a groping of thought in it.
The ship went well, and within a few days they saw the rising sun shine on the masts and spires of New York. The evening of that very day, Father Fitspatrick, of Boston—Father John, his friends called him—coming in rather late from a lecture, was told that a gentleman was waiting in his room to see him. He went in, and found Dick Rowan sitting there, but not the Dick Rowan he had baptized the year before, and welcomed home, and talked gayly with within a few short weeks. This man might have been Dick’s elder brother, and a stern, pale man, too.
“Father,” Dick said faintly, “I want you to keep me a little while. I have come here for sanctuary. If there is any help in religion when other help fails, I want to know it now.”
“But what has happened? What is the matter?” the priest exclaimed.
Dick sank back into the seat from which he had risen. “I’ve lost Edith, sir, and my life has all gone to pieces.”
“Is she dead?” the priest asked.
“No, sir; but she loves some one else.”
Father John drew his chair close to the young man’s side, and took his hand. “My dear son,” he said, “are you going to despair because a woman has been false to you?”
Dick looked up as though not sure that he heard aright. What! any one call Edith false?