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The day passed much as yesterday had done. About four o'clock there came a telegram from Kilian to his sister. He had been delayed, and Mr. Whitney would wait for him, and they would come the next evening by the boat. I think Mary Leighton could have cried if she had not been ashamed. Her pretty blue organdie was on the bed ready to put on.
Perhaps, however, she only asked me because I happened to be nearest her, and she was rather upset by what the doctor said. I knocked at Richard's door. "Well?" "Oh, they want you to come down-stairs a minute. There's something to be done," panting and rather incoherent. "What is to be done?" "The Doctor's here, and he says he must have help." "Where's Kilian?" "Gone to bed."
Then something split: I really cannot say whether it was the mast, or the bowsprit, or the centre-board, but whatever it was, it hurt Mr. Langenau so much that for a moment he was stunned. And then Kilian cannot see why he wasn't drowned. When he came to himself he was still holding the rudder in his hand. The other arm was useless from the falling of this thing that split upon it.
Mary Leighton was fluttering about the flower-bed at the left of the piazza, making herself lovely with geranium and roses. Sophie, in a beautiful costume, was pacifying Charley, who had had a difference with his uncle Kilian.
I knew that there were tears in his eyes, and that that was the reason that he did not speak. It made me strangely, momentarily grateful. "How strange that you should be so good," I said dreamily, "when Sophie is so hateful, and Kilian is so trifling. I think your mother must have been a good woman."
It was particularly hard upon her, as the tutor did not come, and the chair was empty, and a glaring insult to her all the time. Kilian had done his part so innocently and so simply that it was hard to suspect him of any intention to pique her and annoy Richard, but I am sure he did it with just those two intentions.
Did he want four or five more women dancing attendance on him?" "Oh, it was not want of attention he complained of. In fact," said Charlotte, coloring, "It was that he didn't like quite so much, and wanted to be allowed more liberty." Kilian indulged in a good laugh, which wasn't quite fair, considering Charlotte's candor.
Here was no less a matter at stake than the conversion of a whole nation, or at least of a great tribe of heathens, and Kilian imperilled it all on a question of minor importance; for in the first place, the Church of Rome has always held that the pope could grant permission for marriage within interdicted degrees; in the second place, the marriage had taken place before the conversion of the duke to Christianity, and they were therefore innocently and without thought of harm bona fide man and wife.
Lastly, the Church of Rome is opposed to divorce; and Kilian might in any case have put up with this small sin, if sin it were, for the sake of saving the souls of thousands of pagans. My opinion is that St. Kilian richly deserved the fate which befell him. And now to a subject much more interesting to us viz, the capture of Marienburg.
I have done all I could to keep Kilian from throwing himself away, but I might as well have argued with the winds." "I don't care how much Kilian throws himself away," I said, impulsively. "He deserves it for keeping around her all these years. But I do mind that she is your sister, and that she will be mistress of the house at R ." There was an awful silence then.
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