She stopped, embarrassed, for a rude speech had been at her lips.
“You do twice as much as I,” Miss Pembroke finished, with sweet cordiality. “It is true, Annette, though you did not like to say it. You have great energy.”
She put her hand out, and touched caressingly the shoulder of her young hostess in passing. “You are just what Lawrence needs.”
Tears of pleasure filled Annette’s eyes. For all her wealth and the flatteries it had brought her, she had seldom heard a word of earnest commendation.
To be praised by Honora was sweet; but to be praised before Lawrence was sweetest of all.
They hurried through their tea, and went to the church. Mother Chevreuse had not returned home, and the priest also was away. The pleasant task of adorning the altar of Our Lady was left to them.
The stars were beginning to show faintly in the sky when they commenced their work, and all the church was full of that clear yellow twilight. The pillars and walls, snowy white, with only delicate bands of gilding, reflected the softened beams, and seemed to grow transparent in them. But around the side-altar burned a ring of brilliant gas-jets; and through the open door of the sacristy was visible, ruddily lighted, a long passage and stairway leading to the basement.
The light of heaven and the light of earth were thus brought face to face—the one pure, tender, and pervading, the other flaring, thick, and partial. But as daylight faded away, that inner light brought out strange effects. There was no longer anything white in the church: it was all turned to rose-color and deep shadow. Carven faces looked down with seeing eyes from arch, capital, and cornice; the pillars, standing up and down in long rows, appeared to lean together, to move, and change places with each other; there was a tremor in the dimly-seen organ-pipes, as though the strong breath of music were passing through them, and would presently break out in loud accord. A picture of S. John beside the grand altar showed nothing but the face, and the face was as glowing as if it had just been lifted from the bosom of the Lord to look into the Lord’s eyes.
One might fancy that this fair temple in which God had taken up his dwelling only waited for those three to go away, that it might break into joy and adoration over its divine Guest.
On a pedestal at the gospel side of the altar stood the statue of Our Lady, lovely eyelids downcast, as she gazed on those below, loving hands and arms outstretched, inviting all the world to her motherly embrace. An arch of white lilies had already been put up against a larger arch of green that was to be set with candles and a crown of light. They were now engaged in putting under the lilies a third and smaller arch of Mayflowers, that the whole might be like the Lady it was meant to honor—radiant with glory, mantled in purity, and full of tender sweetness.