F. Chevreuse had visited them the morning before, and requested them to go to communion that day, and pray for themselves, their friends, and for his intention.
“I have a difficult duty to perform,” he said, “and I want all the help I can get. So make yourselves as saintly as possible, my dear friends. Confess and prepare yourselves for holy communion as if it were to be your last, and pray with all your strength, and do not allow a single smallest venial sin to touch you all day.”
F. Chevreuse often asked them to pray for his intention, and all they observed in this was his unusual earnestness. It had the effect of making them also unusually earnest in their devotion. Mrs. Gerald was, indeed, so absorbed that she failed to notice that when Honora came from the priest's house, where she had been just before evening, she did not look quite well. F. Chevreuse had requested her to come there from her school, before going home, and she had been with him nearly an hour.
“So you have been to confession,” Mrs. Gerald said, arranging the tray for their tea. “I thought we would go there together this evening.”
She spoke in a very gentle, almost absent way; for she had been saying, as she went about, all the short prayers she could remember to the Blessed Virgin, and would resume them presently.
“So we will go together,” Miss Pembroke replied. “But I wanted to see F. Chevreuse this afternoon.”
She seated herself in a shady corner of the room, and opened her prayer-book; but it trembled so in her hand that she was forced to lay it aside, and pretend to be occupied with her rosary instead. Now and then she stole a glance at her companion, and saw with thankfulness that she was entirely occupied with her devotions. As she went about, preparing with dainty care their simple meal, her lips were moving; and sometimes she would pause a moment to bless herself, or to kiss the crucifix suspended from her neck, or to dwell on some sweet thought she had found hidden in a little prayer, like a blossom under a leaf.
And later in the evening, when the two returned from the priest's house, there was nothing to attract attention in Miss Pembroke's manner; for they sat reading and meditating till it was bed-time. It was their custom, since they lived alone, to prepare thus strictly for the reception of the Holy Eucharist.
Mrs. Gerald stood a minute before the embers of the dying fire, when they were ready to go up-stairs, the hand she had stretched for the bed-candle resting on the edge of the mantel-piece near it. “How peaceful we are here, Honora!” she said in her soft way, yet rather suddenly.
Miss Pembroke was bending to push the few remaining coals back, and her reply was indistinct, yet sounded like an affirmative.