"Little idiot," said Miss Gastonguay, wrinkling her brow in Aurelia's direction. "Wears her heart on her sleeve. The women here make a simpleton of that minister just because he has legs as long as stilts and hair as pretty as a wig."
"Miss Gastonguay, will you pardon me if I make a suggestion?"
"You may make it,--I don't promise to act on it."
"You have taken a liking to this man," said Justin, earnestly; "you who rarely entertain ministers of any denomination."
"Ministers,--I detest them all! The same type: men old in the work, or fledglings fresh from the theological seminaries,--strict, narrow-minded, uninteresting, knowing nothing outside their denomination, whatever it happens to be, and yet dripping with conceit. Why, this man can talk. He has travelled, he understands music, books, pictures--"
"But, Miss Gastonguay, you are clever enough to perceive that he is at this time undergoing a severe struggle with himself."
"There is something the matter with him. I don't know what it is. I only see that he goes about with a red face and sulky eyes. He is really losing his good manners."
"Suppose you were to know that it is a struggle between his good and his bad angel,--mind, I tell this in strict confidence."
"Your confidence shall be respected, but how can I help him? I thought perhaps he was in love with Chelda. She usually has a dozen admirers about."
How blinded she was by her partiality for her niece; and Justin could not enlighten her, could not say, "I have studied your niece. With a cunning born of her infatuation for this man, she is deliberately setting herself to wean him from his allegiance to the Church back to the fleshly pleasures of the world."
"Miss Gastonguay," he said, slowly, "the man, as I understand him, is not thinking of love or marriage. You can imagine such a thing as the conversion of the intellect and not the heart?"
"I must not judge," said Justin, struggling to select only the most fitting words; "but I fear it has been something like this with Mr. Huntington. He was shocked into religion, he was convinced of his own sin and the sin of the world, and he has lifted up his voice to save sinners and with success. But now his religious duties pall upon him. I have opportunities of studying him intimately, and I fear he is about to break down."