"It is not so much that I doubt, father," she said faintly. "But nothing so terrible has ever come near me before, and it is confounding. I want to be reassured."
"Cast all doubt out of your mind, then," he said emphatically. "And if you should send some little message to Mr. Schöninger by a proper messenger, saying that you hope he will soon be delivered from his trouble, it would be a kind and Christian act."
She drew back a little, and made no reply.
"You are not willing to do it?" he asked.
"I would rather not, father," she answered deprecatingly. "I really hope and pray that he may soon be delivered, and I am willing he should know it—he must be sure of it, if he gives the subject a thought—but I would not like to send him a message. There will be men to go and speak kindly to him; he has many friends. If Lawrence were here, he would go. I would not like to take any step in the matter."
F. Chevreuse sighed. "You must be guided by your own feeling and sense of right in this," he said. "I did not mean to advise, but only to suggest."
He knew, as he went away, that she lingered in the door, looking after him in painful uncertainty, and he almost expected to hear himself called back and begged to be her messenger. But no call came; and he went away from his second visit, as from the first, chilled and disappointed.
For one moment the thought which he had thrust aside on coming started out again, and made itself felt. It seemed to him, in that brief glance at it, that there is nothing on earth which can be more cruel than a strict and scrupulous respectability. Then instantly he began to make excuses, and to find reasons why people, women especially, should be less demonstrative than he might have wished.
"What! you will not recognize me?" said a voice at his elbow.
It was a voice to arrest attention—deep, musical, and penetrating; and the speaker was not one to be passed with only a glance. He was of medium height, broad-shouldered, and had an exceedingly handsome face, with brilliant blue eyes, and wavy, dark hair just beginning to be threaded with white. This was F. O'Donovan, whose parish, a small one, lay two miles, or more, from that of F. Chevreuse. Besides these two, there was no other priest resident within a radius of forty miles.