Reigns more or less, and glows in every heart.”
Mr. Brown was enamored of his new existence—possibly with the child passion for toyland; but the passion endured, nevertheless, strengthening with each successive sunrise and maturing with every gloaming. An invitation, accompanied by a card, had arrived by special messenger for the artist, requesting the favor of his company, et cætera, et cætera, to which that gentleman responded in a polite negative, assigning no particular reason, but indulging in vague generalities. He had thought a good deal of Miss Jyvecote, and sat dreaming about her by the sea, his hands clasped around his knees and his beloved meerschaum stuck in his mouth—sat dreaming, and fighting against his dreams—fights in which fancy ever got the uppermost of the rude and real. A longing crept up out of the depths of his heart to see her once again, and to travel in the sunlighted path of her thoughts. One thing he was firmly resolved upon—not to leave Monamullin without another interview; though how this was to be brought about he did not very well see. Yes, he would see her just once more, and then stamp the whole thing out of his mind. He had been hit before, and had come smilingly out of the valley of desolation, and so he should again, although this was so utterly unlike his former experiences.
Father Maurice was charmed with his guest. He had never encountered anything like him—so bright, so genial, so cultured, so humble and submissive, and so anxious to oblige.
“Imagine,” said he in cataloguing his virtues to Larry Muldoon—“imagine his asking me to let him ring the bell for five o’clock Mass, and he a Protestant!”
The priest and his guest had long talks together, the latter drawing out his host—digging for the golden ore of a charming erudition, which lay so deep, but which “was all there.” Night after night did Father Maurice unfold from germ to bud, from bud to flower, from flower to fruit the grand truths of the unerring faith in which he was a day-laborer, the young artist drinking in the sublime teachings with that supreme attention which descends like an aureole. Father Maurice was, as it were, but engaged in thinking aloud, yet his thoughts fell like rain-drops, refreshing, grateful, and abiding.
The good priest, although burning with curiosity with regard to the antecedents of his guest, was too thorough a gentleman, had too great respect for the laws of broken bread and tasted salt, to ask so much as a single question. A waif from the great ocean of humanity had drifted into this little haven, and it should be protected until the ruthless current would again seize it to whirl it outwards and onwards. Miss Jyvecote betrayed her disappointment in various artless ways when Father Maurice arrived at the castle without the artist. “I’m sorry you didn’t fetch him along bon gré mal gré, father,” said Mrs. Jyvecote, “as papa goes to Yorkshire next week, and Juey can talk of no person but Mr. Brown.”
Miss Jyvecote blushed rosy red as she exclaimed: “What nonsense, mamma! You have been speaking a good deal more about him than I have. You rave over his sketch.”
“I think it immense.” Mrs. Jyvecote affected art, and talked from the pages of the Art Journal by the yard. “His aerial perspective is full of filmy tone, and his near foreground is admirably run in, while his sense of color would appear to me to be supreme.”
“Come, until I show you where I have hung it,” exclaimed Miss Juey, leading the priest up a winding stair into a turret chamber fitted up with that exquisite taste which a refined girl evolves like an atmosphere.
“You have really hung my guest most artistically. And such a frame! Where on earth did you get it?”