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"Yet will it come. Ah, think you 'tis a portent? O would the gentle Angelo were here and yet, an he were come methinks I might wish him hence for that, loving thee so, yet am I a maid, and foolish ah, who is here not Angelo so soon? What, 'tis thou, Winfrida? Welcome bring hither the goblet."
It would be a fearful portent if thorough study of nature and of man in all his attributes and works, such as befits a university, led scholars to impiety. But it does not; on the contrary, such study fills men with humility and awe, by bringing them on every hand face to face with inscrutable mystery and infinite power.
Twice he read it through, and at the last reading he seemed to realize its dread portent. "She gives me up! Margie renounces me! Strangers we must be henceforth! What does it all mean? Am I indeed awake, or is this only a painful dream?" He read a few lines of the missive a third time. Something of the old dominant spirit of Archer Trevlyn came back to him. "There is some misunderstanding.
Being pretty tired and hungry, and knowing absolutely nothing of the distance to the next place, I endeavor to cultivate their friendship by smiles, and by addressing the nearest youngster in polite greetings of "chin-chin." All this proves of no avail; they seem one and all to be laboring under the impression that my appearance is of evil portent to themselves.
After that I asked now and then if there was any danger to be guarded against on the way to Fernlea, and I was told by all that there was none. Hardly would a strong guard be needed, for the hand of Offa was heavy on ill doers, and his land had peace from end to end. So then I began to think the portent altogether heathenish, and half forgot it.
The barbarians who dwelt on the shores of that dreary gulf had never before seen such a portent as a vessel of a hundred and sixty tons burden. They fled in terror; and, when they were pursued and overtaken, prostrated themselves before the chief of the strangers and kissed his feet.
That is a big address; but it does not cover as many names as it covers square miles. In time I found her. Still, it took time; and before we met, Hilda had had leisure to settle down quietly to her new existence. People in Rhodesia had noted her coming, as a new portent, because of one strange peculiarity. She was the only woman of means who had ever gone up of her own free will to Rhodesia.
I know not by what delicate mechanism of the soul that record may seem at one moment a sort of tourist thing, to be neglected or despised, and at another moment a portent. But I will confess that all of a sudden, pointing out this very well-known record upon the brass let into the stone in Westminster Hall, I suddenly felt the presence of the thing.
There was indignation in the mother's heart when the child instructed her as to what might be looked for at his bedside; she used all her emphasis in assuring him that no man with two heads would ever trouble those innocent eyes, for there was no such portent anywhere on earth.
It was Christmas eve and all the inmates of the convent paused in their sorrow to rejoice in the happy portent of the death and burial of one whom they loyally believed to be no less entitled to beatification than Catherine herself.
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