United States or Cayman Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The music, the chants, the dim light of the colored windows, the long aisle of lofty arches, and the many persistent and dominant associations taking possession of her memory and imagination, made the Abbey almost as dear to Felicita as it was through its mysterious and sacred repose to Phebe.
"No, not ill," answered Felicita, in an absent manner, as if she was speaking in a dream, "but of all women the most miserable." It seemed to the young curé that the English lady was not aware of what words she uttered. He felt embarrassed and perplexed: all the English were heretics, and how heretics could be comforted or counselled he did not know.
But Phebe had not dared to utter them. Felicita too had not seen either the sunlit hills lying about her, or Phebe watching her departure. She had no thought for anything but what there might be lying before her, in that lonely mountain village, to which, after fourteen years, her reluctant feet were turned.
That Felicita should never have made a pilgrimage to this sacred spot was a wonder to her; but that she should so steadily resist the wish of Felix to visit his father's resting-place, filled Alice's heart with grave misgivings for her own future happiness.
As her lips whispered the last three words, giving to her resolution a definite form and utterance, a shadow beside her own fell upon the cross. She turned quickly and met the kindly inquisitive gaze of the mountain curé who had led Felicita to this spot yesterday.
She might keep silence with a good conscience, for the duty of disclosing all to Canon Pascal arose simply from the possibility that his conduct would be altered by this further knowledge of Roland and Felicita. "But this easy country life is not good for Felix," she said in a more cheerful tone; "he needs a difficult parish to develop his energies.
Even if Felicita consented, he could not let her marry Felix ignorant of the facts which Phebe had disclosed to him. Felix himself must know them some day; and was not this the hour and the place for revealing them to Alice? "My darling," he said, "I know why Felicita never comes here, nor lets her children come; and also why she is at present opposed to the thought of Felix marrying.
Was Roland Sefton a relation of Madame?" "Yes," she whispered, or he thought she whispered it from the motion of her lips. "Madame is not a Catholic?" he asked. Felicita shook her head. "What a pity! what a pity!" he continued, in a tone of mild regret, "or I could console her. Yet I will pray for her this night to the good God, and the Mother of Sorrows, to give her comfort.
Only I thank God I am happy." "I was never happy enough to thank God," Felicita murmured, lying back in her seat and shutting her eyes. Presently the children returned, and, after another silent row, slower and more toilsome, as it was up the river, they drew near home again, and saw Madame's anxious face watching for them over the low garden wall.
Felicita, you do not disapprove of it?" "I cannot disapprove of Alice," she replied gloomily; "but I do disapprove of Felix marrying so young. A man should not marry under thirty." "Thirty!" echoed Canon Pascal; "that would be in seven years. It is a long time; but if they do not object I should not. I'm in no hurry to lose my daughter. But they will not wait so long."
Word Of The Day