Catholics -- United States -- Fiction; Love stories; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
Father Morley was himself a person of rare cultivation of mind; he had
been an omnivorous reader from his childhood; his remarkable education
began long before his seminary days, exceeded textbooks.
He found Cis interesting; he recognized in her that capacity to soar
which so far surpasses the sufficient goodness of excellent souls, and
he made it his affair to help Miss Braithwaite to hold up Cicely’s
opening wings. She grew deeply attached to this tenderly kind, austere
Jesuit, and yielded herself gratefully to his molding.
Thus the winter swung into its steady pace after the New Year, and Cis
was amazed to find that her days were not only peaceful, but full to
overflowing, and that they were happy. There was an ache in her heart
for Rodney; she did not forget, yet being an honest Cis, she realized
that if he were to return to her he would not satisfy her as he had
done; that in severing herself from Rodney Moore she had leaped over
on to a height beyond him, and that from that hour she had gone on
ascending.
How strange it was that in doing right she had gained in time the good
that had been promised her only for eternity! There was that ache in
her heart for Rodney--what woman would not mourn a lost love, perhaps
the more that she began to see the loss in its true light--but the Cis
who had been for a quarter of a year the inmate of Miss Braithwaite’s
house, associated with her and her friends, had grown beyond the girl
who had been satisfied with Rodney Moore.
As the winter evenings grew cold and drear, Anselm Lancaster sought no
less frequently the cheerful fireside, the laden shelves, the grand
piano of Miss Braithwaite’s library; still more the delightful fireside
talk of its mistress, whom he admired with all his might.
And Cis herself? Did he find her an attraction? Sometimes Miss
Braithwaite thought so, but Cis surely did not. However, she had grown
friendly and at ease with Anselm Lancaster, chatted with him, showed
him her natural gifts, as well as the supernatural ones developing in
her; was her frank, sunny self, and of course Anselm was not so stupid
as not to find her likable, admirable. But there was no ground for
seeing more in it than that, Miss Braithwaite decided, perhaps with
relief.
He talked to Cis of the things which interested him; of his work, his
plans. Of his home, which he made a temporary home for those who had
left home and relatives for conscience’ sake, who needed a foothold
upon which to stand to catch the breath of the new atmosphere when the
old had become too vitiated for them to continue to breathe it. Of his
Italian classes, his organized effort to hold the immigrant against
assault in the new land; of all the ramifications of his lay army to
fight against Lucifer, the once-beautiful, the forever subtle and
attractive.
Cis listened enkindled.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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