“You will never master it by pride, Franceline; that very pride is your greatest hindrance in setting your heart free. Try and think more of God and less of yourself. There is no sin, as you say, in the suffering, any more than, if you strayed to the edge of a precipice in the dark, and fell over and were killed, you would be guilty of suicide. The sinfulness now is in your rebellion against the suffering simply because it wounds your pride.”
“It is not all pride, father,” she said meekly. Presently she turned and looked up at him through wet lashes. “Father, I must tell you something,” she said, speaking with a sort of timidity that was unusual with her towards him--“a thought that came to me this morning that never came to me before.…”
“If his wife should die … he would be free?”
A dark shadow fell now on Father Henwick’s large, smooth brow. Franceline read his answer in the frown and the averted gaze; but he spoke soon, though he did not look at her.
“That was a sinful thought! You should have cast it behind you with contempt. Has it come to that with you, that you could look forward to the death of any one as a thing to be longed for?”
“I did not long for it. The thought came to me.”
“You should have hunted it out of your mind like an evil spirit, as it was. You must never let it near you again. _He_ should be to you as if he were already dead. Whether his wife dies or not should not, and does not, concern you. Besides, how do you know whether she is not as young as yourself, and stronger? My child, such a thought as that would lead you to the brink of an abyss, if you listened to it.”
“I never will again, father,” she answered promptly. “I hardly know now whether I listened to it or not; only I could not help telling you.”
“You were right to tell me; and now banish it, and never let it approach you again.”
“You are sure that silence is best with M. de la Bourbonais?”
“Oh! yes. How can you ask me, father?” And Franceline looked up in surprise.
“Yet it cannot remain a secret from him for ever; he is almost certain to hear of it sooner or later, and it might save him a severe shock if he heard it from you. It would set his mind at rest about you?”
“It is quite at rest at present on that score. He has no idea that the discovery would be likely to affect me.”