He was a fine-looking, white-haired man of more than seventy, to whom the long black robe seemed exactly the most suitable dress possible, and he had a good manner too, which was neither that of a mere priest, nor of a mere gentleman, but belonged to both. The first few minutes of talk made Mrs. Costello sure that she did not repent having invited his acquaintance; a fact which had been in some little doubt before.
She had said to him, "Madame Everaert told me you knew Canada, and, as we are Canadians, I could not resist the wish to see one who might still feel an interest in our country," and this turned the conversation immediately to what she desired to hear.
He answered her with a smile, "Probably my knowledge of Canada is very different from yours; mine is almost entirely confined to the wilder and less settled parts--to the Indian lands, in fact."
"Yes. And then it is many years since I returned."
"I have lived for twenty years in Upper Canada; and of some of the Indians, the Ojibways of Moose Island, I have heard a great deal; perhaps you know them?"
The priest's eye brightened, but next moment he sighed.
"The very place!" he said. "Unhappy people! But I am forgetting that you, madame, are not likely to share my feelings on the subject."
"I do not know," Mrs. Costello answered, "that we should be wholly disagreed. I have heard, I may almost say I know myself, much of your mission there."
"Is it possible? Can any good remain still?"
"One of your old pupils died lately, and in his last hours he remembered nothing so well as your teaching."
Her voice shook; this sudden mention of her husband, voluntary as it was, agitated her strongly. Father Paul saw it and wondered, but appeared to see nothing.
"Poor boys! You console me, madame, for many sad thoughts. I was a young man then, and, as you see, I am now a very old one, but I have known few more sorrowful days than the one when I left Moose Island."
"Yet it must have been a hard and wearisome life?"
"Hard?--Yes--but not wearisome. We were ready to bear the hardness as long as we hoped to see the fruit of our labours. I thought there had been no fruit, or very little; but you prove to me that I was too faithless."
Mrs. Costello remained a moment silent. She was much inclined to trust her guest with that part of her story which referred to Christian--no doubt he was in the habit of keeping stranger secrets than hers.