"Ah, don't put it that way to her. She has had so much trouble already. Your Church seems so selfish. Forgive me, but I do resent these celibate views. They are unnatural."
"I shan't interfere. Take her the letter by all means. She must decide for herself."
Pensée rose from the table, and went up the stairs to the room where Brigit still knelt by Parflete's dead body.
"Dearest," said Lady Fitz Rewes, "I think you ought to read this letter. I have had one also. Robert thinks of taking a great step, and perhaps----"
"No," said Brigit, under her breath: "no."
Then, with trembling hands, she read the letter once, twice, three times.
"Say something," said Pensée, touching her. "Say something, Brigit."
She smiled and held the letter to the candle flame. It caught fire and burnt away quickly while she held it.
"Mind your hand--it will catch your hand."
"I don't feel it," said Brigit. She bore the scar of that burn always.
"He is on his way to Rome. He asks me not to write to him. Castrillon is dying. They fought a duel."
"But of course you will write--now. You must write."
"Hasn't my love done harm enough already? I will never see him again. I shall never write to him again."
"You can't mean that. You can't realise what you are saying. People will like him all the better for fighting Castrillon."
"Oh, it isn't the duel, Pensée. He sees his way clearly. He has always tried not to see it. I, too, have tried not to see it. But all that is at an end now."
Pensée threw up her hands, and left the room. Father Foster was standing under a gas-jet at the end of the corridor reading his office. He looked at Lady Fitz Rewes.
"She won't stand in his way?" he asked quietly.
"She won't stand in his way," she answered. "I hope you realise what that means--to her."
"I hope I can realise what it means to both of them," said he.
In 1879, a distinguished author who was engaged in writing a history of the Catholic Movement in England, begged Mr. Disraeli, then Earl of Beaconsfield, for some particulars, not generally known, of Robert Orange's life.
MY DEAR F.,--You ask me for an estimate of Monsignor Orange. Questions are always easy. Let me offer you facts in return. The Castrillon duel was a nine days' wonder--much discussed and soon forgotten. Castrillon left a letter with his second, M. de Lamoignon, to the effect that he had offered Orange "intolerable insults" which "no man of honour" could have suffered. Mrs. Parflete's name did not transpire, but Prince d'Alchingen and others gave speculation no industry on the matter. We were at no loss to know the real cause of the quarrel. Orange applied for the Chiltern Hundreds and went into strict retreat for six months. During that time he saw no friends, wrote no letters, read none. I remember his conduct was severely criticised, because the death of Parflete opened out other possibilities of action. He was not a man, however, whom one could order to be this, that, or the other; still less could one reproach him for not being this, that, or the other. It was his faith to believe that salvation rests on the negation and renunciation of personality. He pushed this to the complete suppression of his Will, tenderly considered. I need not detain you on the familiar dogmas of Christianity with regard to the reign of nature and the reign of grace. Your view may be expressed thus:--