“Elinor and I are not friends now as we were once—before she became a Catholic.”
“Miss Lloyd a Catholic!”
“Yes, Mr. Schuyler, did you not know that? All of the family are Protestants except her. Her mother was so very liberal as to allow her to be educated at a convent of those Sisters of Charity, and this is the result. I have never been intimate with her since.”
Mr. Schuyler is very uncomfortably
astonished by this information. He has had pleasant thoughts of the possible consequence of his reconciliation with Elinor. She has so much risen in his estimation by this solution of the picture mystery and her generous, honorable forbearance toward Lizzie, that he is thinking how very pleasant it would be to pass his life with such a companion. She certainly has proved herself very trustworthy. But a Catholic! That changes the aspect of affairs. Does he want a wife of that faith? Would not the coquettish blonde beauty be more desirable? And yet he cannot say that the ways of Miss Lennox altogether please him. He has been willing to amuse himself by a clandestine correspondence with the unknown beauty, but the known writer of those entertaining epistles does not seem to him just the one to trust with his life’s chance of domestic bliss. The trust is not for just such as she. He really believes no harm of Lizzie, but he knows a worse man might think worse of her than she deserves. He wishes she were the Catholic and Elinor the Protestant. Why now, for the upholding of all his cherished beliefs and prejudices, could not the result of the two different systems of education have been reversed? Surely, he thinks, “Popery would, as a rule, have made such a girl as Lizzie rather than one like Elinor. After all,” he concludes, “the difference is in their own natures, and would have shown itself had they both had the same training,” and in this we cannot dispute him. But possibly, although Elinor might never have condescended to such a course, Lizzie might with better teaching have been saved from it also. The girl is not evil, only young, weak, vain, and she has needed just that which Elinor has had to sustain and strengthen her. Lizzie relies on
herself, on her own crude knowledge of the world, and on just as much advice as she chooses to accept. She never bares her conscience and her soul, as Elinor does, to any one. Therefore, she not only robs herself of the counsel of wiser heads, but she never brings upon herself that searching self-examination necessary to the seeing of herself rightly. Had she done that, had she been forced to look with this introverted gaze upon herself, she would have shrunk from placing herself in this doubtful position. She will remember this in after years with a sense of annoyance, if not of any deeper sentiment. And yet her present feeling toward Elinor is one of irritation. She knows that Elinor was right in her advice to her, and that she can look down upon her from a more exalted height. The fact that she has not taken airs of superiority on herself has not lessened Lizzie’s resentment. The feeling that she is on a lower moral plane than that of her Catholic, convent-educated cousin, is a sufficient grievance of itself, and admits to her unregulated mind of no extenuation in Elinor’s behalf.
It is not very easy for Mr. Schuyler to find an opportunity to explain to Elinor his enlightenment and change of views. She shuns him so sedulously that he begins to think he will have to tell her at the table, in the presence of the family, that he has met her cousin. True, he could do this without any indelicacy, but he has planned a little programme of a tête-à-tête, which he thinks more pleasant, to himself at least, than leaving her to draw her own conclusions from such meagre information as he can give her in the presence of others. Moreover, he does not wish to startle her before others by mentioning Lizzie’s name—a sore subject to her, he suspects.
So he bides his time, although impatiently. If Elinor were like her cousin, he thinks he would not wait so long for opportunity to speak. His man’s nature is aroused by the necessity of pursuing.
But Mr. Schuyler has not made up his mind that he is willing to take a Catholic wife. He is at present only desirous of establishing the old pleasant, friendly footing between Elinor and himself—possibly a more tender one; but he will not yet commit himself. Not until he has seen how deeply rooted is her Catholicism—only an ism, it seems to him. He is getting impatient, however, at her continued indifference toward him. He sees that he must make his opportunity; and, being a young gentleman fertile in expedients, he resorts to waylaying her at the hour when her last music lesson is ended for the day.
Elinor’s face flushes and her brow contracts—a little indignant flash is in her brown eyes as he confronts her. She remembers the last scene between them at that hour by the piano, and it does not tend to soften her manner. Evidently he has got all the work to do, unhelped by her. So he starts off, as is his usual manner, with an abrupt introduction of the subject.