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While he was still reading, the ball at Lord Loring's house came to its end. Stella and Lady Loring were alone together, talking of him, before they retired to their rooms. "Forgive me for owning it plainly," said Lady Loring "I think you and your mother are a little too ready to suspect Father Benwell without any discoverable cause.
My daughter I don't mean my sweet Stella; I mean the unnatural creature in the nunnery sets herself above her own mother. Did I ever tell you she was impudent enough to say she would pray for me? Father Benwell and the Papal Aggression over again!
Not from any wonderful exercise of penetration on my part, but in consequence of something I have just heard in course of conversation with a Catholic friend. Father Benwell, my dear, turns out to be a Jesuit; and, what is more, a person of such high authority in the Order, that his concealment of his rank, while he was with us, must have been a matter of necessity.
His friends would, one and all, have received the scandalous assertion with contempt; and Penrose himself, if he had heard of it, might have failed to control his temper for the first time in his life. "May I ask a question, without giving offense?" he said, timidly. Father Benwell took his hand. "My dear Arthur, let us open our minds to each other without reserve. What is your question?"
He put the question in a tone of passive endurance resigned to the severest moral martyrdom that could be inflicted on him. "I will answer you in two words," said Father Benwell. "In justice to Miss Eyrecourt, I am bound to produce her excuse for marrying you." Romayne looked at him in stern amazement. "Excuse!" he repeated. "Yes excuse.
"My dear child, how pale you look!" said Mrs. Eyrecourt. "Come with me directly you must have a glass of wine." This dexterous device for entrapping Stella into a private conversation failed. "Not now, mamma, thank you," she said. Father Benwell, on the point of discreetly withdrawing, stopped, and looked at Mrs. Eyrecourt with an appearance of respectful interest.
I shall leave the Vange property to the Church, and I shall appoint you one of the trustees. You can't object to that." Father Benwell smiled sadly. "The law spares me the ungracious necessity of objecting, in this case," he answered. "My friend, you forget the Statutes of Mortmain. They positively forbid you to carry out the intention which you have just expressed."
Romayne held out his hand for the will, in silence. He was still watching his son. There were but few more sticks now left to be thrown in the fire. Father Benwell interfered, for the first time. "One word, Mr. Romayne, before you examine that document," he said. Beyond that it authorizes and even desires you to make any changes which you or your trusted legal adviser may think right.
We had hardly taken our seats when we saw Father Benwell among the travelers on the platform, accompanied by a gray-haired gentleman who was a stranger to both of us. Lord Loring dislikes strangers. Otherwise, I might have found myself traveling to Paris with that detestable Jesuit for a companion. Paris, May 3.
He shook hands with Stella, and left the picture gallery. Thus far, the conspiracy to marry him promised even more hopefully than the conspiracy to convert him. And Father Benwell, carefully instructing Penrose in the next room, was not aware of it! But the hours, in their progress, mark the march of events as surely as they mark the march of time.
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