“It is divine!”
“Has it seemed to you that if such a woman knew herself to have once wrongly given you pain, her atonement might be as headlong and excessive as her offense? That she could have no reserves in her reparation?”
Don Ippolito looked at Ferris, but did not interpose.
“Miss Vervain is very religious in her way, and she is truth itself. Are you sure that it is not concern for what seems to her your terrible position, that has made her show so much anxiety on your account?”
“Do I not know that well? Have I not felt the balm of her most heavenly pity?”
“And may she not be only trying to appeal to something in you as high as the impulse of her own heart?”
“As high!” cried Don Ippolito, almost angrily. “Can there be any higher thing in heaven or on earth than love for such a woman?”
“Yes; both in heaven and on earth,” answered Ferris.
“I do not understand you,” said Don Ippolito with a puzzled stare.
Ferris did not reply. He fell into a dull reverie in which he seemed to forget Don Ippolito and the whole affair. At last the priest spoke again: “Have you nothing to say to me, signore?”