“And you will marry her then, and she feels it, and yet you pretend you use no influence!”
“I would marry her if she would not think me unworthy.”
“I need say no more. You have been my friend, and I thank you for your kindness; but henceforth our paths are separate. If I lose my child, I shall know you robbed me of her. I only ask you now to consider what I told you of our family and fortunes as a sacred confidence.”
“My friend,” said Henry sadly, as he rose, “I will obey you, and you may consider your secret as sacred as if it were my own. But remember this is your own act, and, if ever you wish to call on my friendship again, my services will be as willingly yours as though this breach had never been. God bless you and your daughter Maheleth!”
He left the room as in a dream; Rachel scanned his face curiously as she let him out at the crazy door.
“So,” he thought, “thus ends my connection with that house; and yet God knows how true my intentions were. I dare not seek her, still I know she may need me. God grant it be true that Maheleth is a Christian at heart!”
Unconsciously he bent his steps towards the cathedral; a few people were collected about the confessionals. The stained windows were dark and blurred in the uncertain light; only a lamp here and there hung from the pillars.
Perhaps his prayers were more fervent in intention than full in form, and mechanically he watched the shrouded confessionals. Suddenly from behind the green curtain of one of them issued the figure of the Jewish girl, a calm look lighting up her [pg 526] features, and her deportment altogether unlike that which he had so often and so painfully noticed.
Her eye fell upon him instantly, and, far from shunning him, gave him a long glance of recognition and sympathy. She knelt for some time, then rose and walked down the nave. He followed her, and at the entrance door she paused as if to wait for him.
“I have seen your father, Fräulein,” Holcombe said, “and he told me a great many things.”