Sitting on his bench at work, it seemed to Charley that sometimes she was near him, and more than once he turned quickly round as though she were, in very truth, standing beside him. He thought of her continually, and often with an unbearable pain. He figured her in his mind as pale and distressed, and always her eyes had the piteous terror of that last look as she went away over the hills.
But the weeks had worn on, then the Seigneur, who had been to Montreal, came back with the news that Rosalie was looking as beautiful as a picture. “Grown a woman in beauty and in stature; comely--comely as a lady in a Watteau picture, my dear messieurs!” he had said to the Cure, standing in the tailor’s shop.
Replying, the Cure had said: “She is in good hands, with good people, recommended to me by an abbe there; yet I am not wholly happy about her. When her trouble comes to her”--Charley’s needle slipped and pierced his finger to the bone--“when her father goes, as he must, I fear, there will be no familiar face; she will hear no familiar voice.”
“Faith, there you are wrong, my dear Cure” answered the Seigneur; “there’ll be a face yonder she likes very well indeed, and a voice she’s fond of too.”
Charley’s back was on them at that moment, of which he was glad, for his face was haggard with anxiety, and it seemed hours before the Cure said: “Whom do you mean, Maurice?” and hours before the Seigneur replied: “Mrs. Flynn, of course. I’m sending her tomorrow.”
Mrs. Flynn had gone, and Charley had, in one sense, been made no happier by that, for it seemed to him that Rosalie would rather that strangers’ eyes were on her than the inquisitively friendly eye of Mary Flynn.
Weeks had grown into months, and no news came--none save that which the Cure let fall, or was brought by the irresponsible Notary, who heard all gossip. Only the Cure’s scant news were authentic, however, and Charley never saw the good priest but he had a secret hope of hearing him say that Rosalie was coming back. Yet when she came back, what would, or could, he do? There was always the crime for which he or Billy must be punished. Concerning this crime his heart was growing harder--for Rosalie’s sake. But there was Kathleen--and Rosalie was now in the city where she lived, and they might meet! There was one solution--if Kathleen should die! It sickened him that he could think of that with a sense of relief, almost of hope. If Kathleen should die, then he would be free to marry Rosalie--into what? He still could only marry her into the peril and menace of the law? Again, even if Kathleen did not stand in the way, neither the Cure nor any other priest would marry him to her without his antecedents being certified. A Protestant minister would, perhaps, but would Rosalie give up her faith? Following him without the blessing of the Church, she would trample under foot every dear tradition of her life, win the scorn of all of her religion, and destroy her own peace; for the faith of her fathers was as the breath of her nostrils. What cruelty to her!