"I did not think Adeline had it in her!" exclaimed Rose, in a glow of delight, partly to the company, chiefly to herself. Rose had stood in a rapture of admiration the whole time. Adeline and Mary could not cast old scores at her, now. CHAPTER XXV. A CRISIS IN A LIFE. The dreaded interview with M. de Castella was all but over, and Adeline leaned against the straight-backed chair in the cabinet, more dead than alive, so completely had her father's words bereft her of hope and energy. When Mr. St. John first opened the affair, Signor de Castella had felt considerably annoyed, and would not glance at the possibility of breaking the contract with de la Chasse. But the Signor, cold as he was in manner, was not, at heart, indifferent to Adeline's happiness. And when he found how entirely she was bound up in Mr. St. John, and the latter brought forth his munificent proposals and departed for England to get them triumphantly confirmed, then he began in secret to waver. But now stepped in another. You, who read this, are of course aware that in many Roman Catholic families, especially foreign ones, the confessor exercises much influence over temporal matters as well as spiritual. And though the confessor to the Castellas, Father Marc, had not hitherto seen cause, or perhaps had opportunity, to put himself forward in such affairs, he felt himself bound to do so now. But you must not jump to a mistaken conclusion, or fancy he was one of those overbearing priests sometimes represented in works of fiction. That there are meddlers in all positions of life--in the Romish Church as well as in our Reformed one--every one knows. But Father Marc was not one of these. He was a good and conscientious man, and though an over-rigid Romanist, it was only in zeal for the Faith of his country, the religion to which he had been born and reared. No other Faith, according to his tenets, to his firm belief, would lead a soul to Heaven: and he deemed that he was acting for the best, nay, for the immortal interest of Adeline. Do not blame him! He loved the child, whom he had watched grow up from infancy. He honestly believed that to suffer Adeline to marry an Englishman and a heretic and make her home in Protestant England, would be to consign her to perdition. He therefore placed his veto upon it, a veto that might not be gainsaid, and forbid the contract to be interrupted with de la Chasse. If he interfered, with what may appear to us desperate measures, he believed the cause to be desperate which justified them; and he acted in accordance with the dictates of his own conscience; with what he deemed his duty to Adeline, to his religion, and to God.