Catholics -- United States -- Fiction; Love stories; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
“Cicely Adair, look out for the man that is not true to his faith;
disloyalty to his God is a mighty poor argument for his loyalty to
a woman. And do your converting before, not after you marry him!
Something there I don’t like; never have. I’m afraid for you, Cicely
Adair. I wish I had proof--or else no doubts!” Miss Gallatin looked
troubled.
Across the space of several months Jeanette Lucas’ voice reached Cis as
Miss Gallatin spoke; it said again to her:
“I thought that I should cure his one defect, his indifference to
religion. I know now that he was false to all things, to me as to God!
Cicely Adair, you’re a Catholic girl; remember this lesson when you
think of marrying.”
Cicely shivered involuntarily, and the chill of the memory of this
warning from the girl whom she had revered, then pitied, drove out the
quick anger with which she had heard Miss Gallatin’s last words, and
made her answer quietly:
“I think you mean to be good to me, Miss Gallatin, and I appreciate
it, but, please, nothing more against Rodney Moore to me. I ought
not to have let you say one word! He loves me, as I love him, and he
trusts me as I trust him. I don’t know what he will say when I tell
him that someone warned me against him and that I let them--of course
I must confess it to him! I shall marry him. There isn’t anything else
to do when the whole world would be black-empty without him! Even if
I’m to be unhappy, still I must marry him. But I’m not afraid of being
unhappy. How silly, how wrong, but still more how silly, to suspect
people without a grain of reason! You haven’t the least proof of Rod’s
being anything but what I’ve found him, the best, as he is the dearest,
cleverest, kindest, biggest, truest man in all the whole wide world!”
“Forgive my meddling, Miss Adair,” said Miss Gallatin humbly. “No
one ever rescued a girl in love from her fate, even though she
brought tons of proof against the man. And I have none; you’re right.
Nevertheless--But I’m to say no more! I like you, my dear; I truly
like you, and I’ve known what it was to love a man madly, trust him
utterly, and find him false and evil! If G. Rodney leaves my house for
that apartment and you’re not domiciled in it, will you come to board
with me? I’d like to have you under my roof. And the day may come when
you’ll find queer, lean, ugly Hannah Gallatin better than no one. Like
Mrs. Wallace’s?”
“Oh, yes; it’s all right,” said Cis, glad to be let off from answering
the previous questions. “It’s clean, and she gives us lots of good
food, but--Mrs. Wallace’s women boarders are not all my fancy might
paint them!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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