“There was no better way,” she said. “The result would have been the same in any case, and she suffered only a minute.”
Tears were swimming in his fine eyes.
“She has, indeed, hidden herself in the bosom of God, where no harm can reach her, and it is best so. We can see that it is most merciful for her. But for that unhappy son....”
“Do not name him!” exclaimed Miss Pembroke, shuddering. “I cannot think of him without abhorrence! See what ruin he has wrought wherever he has been. What has escaped him? Nothing! Do you, can you, believe there is hope for one whose soul is such an abyss of weakness and selfishness? He has stripped from me my dearest friends; he has smitten those who loved him best....”
She stopped, half from the bitter weeping that choked her words, half because the priest had laid his checking hand on her arm.
“The silence of death is in the house,” he said gently. “Do not disturb it by anger. Leave Lawrence Gerald to the lashes of his guilty conscience. Believe me, it will be punishment enough. Forgive him, and pray for him.”
“Not yet! I cannot yet!” she protested. “He has been forgiven too much. But I will say no more. I am sorry I should have spoken so in her home.”
“Come out into the air of the garden a little while; it will refresh you,” the priest urged. “I must go directly to F. Chevreuse, but I will return. He went to Mrs. Ferrier more than an hour ago, and was to wait there for me or come this way to learn the result. Poor F. Chevreuse! he is sorely tried. Everything rests on him. Don't sit here in the dark any longer. Come!”
“You had better go, Miss Pembroke. You can do nothing here,” Mrs. Macon said to her.
She went out and hid herself in a little arbor that had been a favorite retreat of Mrs. Gerald's on warm summer days, and sitting there, too stunned for weeping, now that the first burst of tears was dried, tried to recollect and realize what had happened.