The next morning, after Mass, Honora Pembroke went in to see F. Chevreuse, waiting in the church till she thought he had taken his breakfast.
"I did not see you at communion this morning," he said, after greeting her pleasantly. "Why was that, young woman?"
They were in the sitting-room that had belonged to Mother Chevreuse. Her son now occupied these rooms, and all the little tokens of a woman's presence had disappeared. No work-basket, with shining needles and thimble, glittered in the sunlight; no shawl nor scarf lay over any chair-back; no flower nor leaf adorned the place. All the grace had gone.
Honora perceived, by the momentary clouding of the priest's face, that he understood the glance she had cast about the room and the involuntary sigh that had followed it, and she hastily recalled her thoughts.
"I am an unfortunate sister of Proserpine," she said. "Some one sent me a pomegranate yesterday as a rarity; and this morning, while I was dressing, and thinking of my communion too, I ate two or three of the seeds."
"You are a careless girl!" F. Chevreuse exclaimed, with that pretence of playful scolding which shows so much real kindness. "But, fortunately, your banishment is not so long as that of your Greek sister was."
"I was not thinking without distraction," Honora continued. "There was something else on my mind, or I should have remembered my fast. On the whole, I am rather glad that I could not go to communion this morning, for I was not so quiet as I ought to be. I have come to tell you about it." A faint blush flitted over her face. She looked up for the encouraging nod and "Yes!" which were not wanting, and then told half her story in a sentence: "Mr. Schöninger told me last night that he thinks a great deal of me."
F. Chevreuse nodded again, and did not look quite so much astonished as she had expected him to be.
The other and most troublesome part of the story followed immediately, breathed out with a kind of terror: "And after I had refused him, and he had left the room, and walked away with you, I felt pained, not for him, but for myself. I almost wanted to call him back; though, if he had come, I should have been sorry. I do not understand it."
She looked like one who expects a severe sentence, and scarcely drew breath till the answer came.