“How good you are, dear friend!” she replied. “God bless you for it!”
“It is your blessing that I want,” said he. “It was for you that I took the little trouble you are pleased to magnify into something deserving of gratitude.”
“Please do not say so, Mr. Carlisle,” said Assunta earnestly. “You do such noble acts, and then you spoil them by your want of faith.”
The word was unfortunately chosen.
“If by faith,” Mr. Carlisle replied, “you mean your Catholic faith, I cannot force myself to accept what does not appeal to my reason. I can respect an honest conviction in others when I am in turn treated with equal liberality; but,” he added in a low tone, “I could hate the faith, so called, which comes between me and the fulfilment of my dearest wish.”
There was a call for more music, and so there was no opportunity, even had there been inclination, for a reply. But as Assunta was passing wearily to her room after the last guest had departed, Mr. Carlisle stopped her, and, after his usual good-night, he said: “Forgive me, child. I have not been myself to-day.”
Two weeks afterwards, when her guardian lay prostrate on his bed in the delirium of fever, Assunta remembered those few words, which at the time had given her pain, with that agony of sorrow which can only be aroused by the knowledge that the soul of one beloved may at any moment be launched upon the immeasurable ocean of eternity, rudderless and anchorless.
To Be Continued.