“God forbid that I should shrink from any human creature!” he answered, earnestly. “Who among us has a right to do that?”
She hardly dared trust herself to believe him. “You would still pity her?” she persisted, “and still feel for her?”
“With all my heart.”
“Oh, how good you are!”
He held up his hand in warning. The tones of his voice deepened, the luster of his eyes brightened. She had stirred in the depths of that great heart the faith in which the man lived—the steady principle which guided his modest and noble life.
“No!” he cried. “Don’t say that! Say that I try to love my neighbor as myself. Who but a Pharisee can believe that he is better than another? The best among us to-day may, but for the mercy of God, be the worst among us tomorrow. The true Christian virtue is the virtue which never despairs of a fellow-creature. The true Christian faith believes in Man as well as in God. Frail and fallen as we are, we can rise on the wings of repentance from earth to heaven. Humanity is sacred. Humanity has its immortal destiny. Who shall dare say to man or woman, ‘There is no hope in you?’ Who shall dare say the work is all vile, when that work bears on it the stamp of the Creator’s hand?”
He turned away for a moment, struggling with the emotion which she had roused in him.
Her eyes, as they followed him, lighted with a momentary enthusiasm—then sank wearily in the vain regret which comes too late. Ah! if he could have been her friend and her adviser on the fatal day when she first turned her steps toward Mablethorpe House! She sighed bitterly as the hopeless aspiration wrung her heart. He heard the sigh; and, turning again, looked at her with a new interest in his face.
“Miss Roseberry,” he said.
She was still absorbed in the bitter memories of the past: she failed to hear him.