“I will try to arrange my plans so as to give myself that pleasure,” replied the priest, as he assisted Mr. Carlisle into the carriage.
What strange contradictions there are in human nature! How little can we account for our varying moods and the motives which influence our actions! And how often we seem to get at cross-purposes with life, and only see how far we have been wrong when a merciful Providence, overruling all, unknots the tangled thread and straightens the crooked purpose!
Excepting the visit of a few hours paid by Father Percival to his friend, two months passed by, and nothing was heard of Mr. Carlisle. Those two months were to Assunta longer, more wearisome, than the five years that had preceded them. We may talk of hopes that are dead, and may honestly believe them buried deep down in the grave which duty has prepared and time has covered. But hope is the hardest thing in this world to kill; and thank God that it is so! Let but a gleam of sunshine, a breath of the warm upper air, into that sepulchre, and the hopes that have lain buried there for years will revive and come forth with renewed vigor. It is much more difficult to lay them to rest a second time.
Assunta had borne her trial nobly; but, as she sat alone on Christmas Eve, and her thoughts naturally dwelt upon that happy return, and then the unaccountable disappearance of Mr. Carlisle, her courage almost failed her, and her brave heart sank within her, as she thought how dreary the future looked. She had excused herself from joining the others at a little family party, and for an hour she had sat idle before the fire—a most unwonted self-indulgence for one so conscientious as Assunta Howard.
A ring at the door and a voice in the hall made her start and tremble a little, as she had not done on that first evening of Father Percival's return. She had scarcely recovered herself when Mr. Carlisle entered the room.
“I have come to account for myself,” were his first words. “I hoped that I should find you alone to-night.”
“Mrs. Lee has gone to her mother's,” was the reply.
“Yes, I knew it. Assunta, what have you thought of me? Still more, what will you think of me now? I have suffered much in these two months; perhaps it is ungenerous in me to say this to you. Assunta, never for one moment have I been unfaithful to the love I told you of so many years ago; but I had given up the hope of ever possessing yours. Even when the obstacle you know of had been removed, I thought that I could bear to see you happy, as I believed you were, in a life in which I had no share. I felt that it would not be right even to ask you to marry one so much older than yourself, with broken health and darkened spirits. And your fresh beauty, still so girlish, so all-unchanged, confirmed my purpose. Ah! child, time, that has silvered my hair, has not dimmed the golden aureola which crowns your dear head. But in the many lonely hours that I have passed since my return, my courage has grown faint. I have longed for your sweet presence in my home, until an answering voice has urged me to come to you. Assunta, once, beneath the shadow of the cross, in the moonlit Colosseum, I offered you my love, and you put God between us. Again I urged my suit, [pg 485] and again you erected the same impassable barrier. To-night I am so selfish that, even as I have described myself to be, I come to you a third time with a love which years have but strengthened. My darling, God no longer comes between us; can I ever hope to win that true, brave heart?”
With a child-like simplicity and a true womanliness Assunta put her hand in his, and said:
“Mr. Carlisle, it has long been yours. ‘Unless he can love you in God,’ my mother said. I believe that the condition is now fulfilled.”