第76章

THE BREACH IS WIDENED.

A FORTNIGHT after Father Benwell's discovery, Stella followed her husband one morning into his study."Have you heard from Mr.

Penrose?" she inquired.

"Yes.He will be here to-morrow."

"To make a long visit?"

"I hope so.The longer the better."

She looked at him with a mingled expression of surprise and reproach."Why do you say that?" she asked."Why do you want him so much--when you have got Me?"Thus far, he had been sitting at his desk, resting his head on his hand, with his downcast eyes fixed on an open book.When she put her last question to him he suddenly looked up.Through the large window at his side the morning light fell on his face.The haggard look of suffering, which Stella remembered on the day when they met on the deck of the steamboat, was again visible--not softened and chastened now by the touching resignation of the bygone time, but intensified by the dogged and despairing endurance of a man weary of himself and his life.Her heart ached for him.She said, softly: "I don't mean to reproach you.""Are you jealous of Penrose?" he asked, with a bitter smile.

She desperately told him the truth."I am afraid of Penrose," she answered.

He eyed her with a strange expression of suspicious surprise.

"Why are you afraid of Penrose?"

It was no time to run the risk of irritating him.The torment of the Voice had returned in the past night.The old gnawing remorse of the fatal day of the duel had betrayed itself in the wild words that had escaped him, when he sank into a broken slumber as the morning dawned.Feeling the truest pity for him, she was still resolute to assert herself against the coming interference of Penrose.She tried her ground by a dangerous means--the means of an indirect reply.

"I think you might have told me," she said, "that Mr.Penrose was a Catholic priest."He looked down again at his book."How did you know Penrose was a Catholic priest?""I had only to look at the direction on your letters to him.""Well, and what is there to frighten you in his being a priest?