Noel's note came early. It announced that his mother would be ready to receive her visitor any time after eleven. It was full of the strongest a.s.surances of love and constancy, and Christine knew it was meant to comfort and support her in her approaching ordeal. She felt so strong to meet this, however, that even Mrs. Murray's earnest protest that harm would come of the visit failed to intimidate her, and she turned a deaf ear to all her good friend's entreaties to her to give it up. Mrs.

Murray's advice was for the immediate marriage and departure for Europe, but Christine's mind was made up, and could not be shaken.

She was feeling strangely calm as she drove along through a part of the great city she had never ever seen before, where there were none but splendid houses, with glimpses, through richly-curtained windows, of luxurious interiors, and where all the people who pa.s.sed her, whether on foot or in handsome carriages, had an air of ease and comfort and luxury that made her feel herself still more an alien. She did not regret her resolution, but she felt quite hopeless of its result. It would make matters simpler for her, at all events.

When the carriage stopped she got out with a strange feeling of unreality, closed the door behind her, careful to see that it caught, spoke to the driver quietly and told him to wait, and then walked up the steps and rang the bell. During the moment she stood there a boy came along and threw a small printed paper at her feet. It was an advertis.e.m.e.nt of a new soap, and she was reading it mechanically when the door was opened by a tall man-servant who stood against the background of a stately hall, whose rich furnishings were revealed by the softened light that came through the stained gla.s.s windows.

Christine was closely veiled, and coming out of the sunshine it all seemed obscure and dim. She asked if Mrs. Noel was at home, and when the man said yes, and ushered her in she desired him to say to Mrs. Noel that the lady with whom she had an appointment was come.

Then she sat down in the great drawing-room and waited. The silence was intense. She seemed to have shrunk to a very small size as she sat in the midst of all this high-pitched, broad-proportioned stateliness. As her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness the objects about her seemed to come out, one by one--beautiful pictures, graceful statues, rich draperies and delicate, fine ornaments of many kinds. A carriage rolled by outside, one of the horses slipping on the thin coat of ice with which the shady side of the street was covered. The driver jerked him up sharply, with a smothered exclamation, and went on. As the sound of wheels died away she could hear a street band far off, playing a popular air. Then that too ceased and the silence without was as profound as the silence within. Christine felt precisely as if she were dreaming. It seemed to her hours that she had waited here, though she knew it was only a very few minutes, before the servant returned. Mrs. Noel requested that she would be kind enough to come up-stairs, he said.

Christine followed him silently up the great staircase, and was ushered into a room near its head. She heard the door closed behind her, and saw a small, slight figure, dressed in black, standing opposite to her.

"Good-morning. Excuse my asking you to come up-stairs," a clear, refined voice began; but suddenly it broke off, and perfect silence followed, and the eyes of the two women met. Christine was very pale, and those beautiful eyes of hers had dark rings around them, but they were marvellously clear and true, and, above all, they were eloquent with sorrow.

The elder woman advanced to her and took her hand.

"Oh, my child, how you must have suffered!" she said.

"Ah, you know what it is. You have suffered, too. We shall understand each other better for that."

"My dear, I seem to understand it all. Don't be unhappy. You need have no fear of me. If you love my son as he loves you, you have my consent.

I will not ask to know anything."

"You must know. I have come to tell you. You will probably change your mind when you have heard."

The elder woman, who was pale and delicate, and yet in spite of all this bore some resemblance to her strong young son, now led her tall companion to a seat, and sitting down in front of her, said kindly:

"Take off your hat and gloves, my dear. Try to feel at home with me. I love my son too dearly to go against him in the most earnest desire of his life. He has told me nothing, except that you love each other, and that there is something which you consider an obstacle to your marriage, but which he utterly refuses to accept as such. Tell me about it, dear, and let me set your mind at rest."

Christine took off her gloves, because they were a constraint to her, and now, as she gave her two bare hands into those of Mrs. Noel, she said calmly:

"You think it is some little thing--that lack of fortune or a difference in social position is the obstacle. I would not be here now if it were no more than that--for I do love him!"

The last words broke from her as if involuntarily, and the impulse that made her utter them sent the swift tears to her eyes. But she forced them back, and they had no successors.

"And he loves you, too--oh, how he loves you! I wonder if you know."

"Yes, I know--I know it all. He has shown and proved, as well as told me. We love each other with a complete and perfect love. Even if I have to give him up nothing can take that away."

"My dear, you need not give him up. I asked my son one question only: 'Is her honor free from stain?'"

"And what was his answer?"

"'Absolutely and utterly. She is as stainless as an angel.' Those were his very words."

"G.o.d bless him for them! G.o.d forever bless him!" said Christine. "I know, in his eyes, it is so."

"In his eyes!" repeated Mrs. Noel. "Is there any doubt that it would be so in any eyes?"

"Yes," said Christine, "there is great doubt."

It was well for her that she had not hoped too much--well that she had kept continually in mind the awful value of the revelation she had come to make. If she had been sanguine and confident the look that now came over the face of Noel's mother would have been a harder thing to bear.

But Christine was all prepared for it. It wounded, but it did not surprise nor disturb her perfect calm. There was a distinct change in the tone with which Mrs. Noel now said:

"If you have been unfortunate, poor girl, and have been led into trouble without fault of your own, as may possibly be, no one could pity you more than I. I can imagine such a case, and I could not look at you and think any evil of you. But if you know the world at all, you must know that these things--let a woman be utterly free from fault herself--carry their inexorable consequences."

"I know the world but little," said Christine, "and yet I know that."

"Then, my dear child, you cannot wonder that the woman so unfortunately situated is thought to be debarred from honorable marriage."

"I do not wonder when I meet with this judgment in the world or in you. I only wondered when I found in your son a being too high for it--a being to whom right is right and pureness is pureness, as it is to G.o.d. You will remember, madame, that it was your son who claimed that I was not debarred from honorable marriage, and not I. Oh, I have suffered--you were right. No wonder that the sign of it is branded on my forehead for all the world to see. I have suffered in a way as far beyond the worst pain you have ever known as that pain of yours has been from pleasure. You have known death in its most awful form when it took from you your dearest ones, but I have known death too. My little baby, who was like the very core of my heart, round which the heartstrings twisted, and the clinging flesh was wrapped, was torn away from me by death, and it was pain and anguish unspeakable--but I have known a suffering compared to which that agony was joy. There can be worse things to bear than the death of your heart's dearest treasure--at least I know it may be so with women. And it was because you were a woman, with a woman's possibilities of pain, that I wanted to come to you--to tell you all, and let you say whether I am a fit wife for your son."

Ah, poor Christine! She felt, as she spoke those words, the silent, still, impalpable recoil in her companion's heart. She knew the poor woman was trying to be kind and merciful and sympathetic, but she also knew that what she had just said had rendered Noel's mother the foe and opposer of this marriage, instead of its friend.

"Go on, tell me all," his mother said, and that subtle change of voice and manner was distincter still to the acute consciousness of Christine's suffering soul. "I will be your friend whatever happens, and I honor you for the spirit in which you look upon this thing. I will speak out boldly, though you know I dislike to give you pain. But tell me this: Do you think yourself a fit wife for my son?"

Christine raised her head and answered with a very n.o.ble look of pride:

"I do."

Her companion seemed to be surprised, and a faint shade of disapproval crossed her face.

"I know it," said Christine. "I know he did not say too much when he spoke those blessed words to you and said I was stainless. G.o.d saw my heart through everything and He knows that it is so, but the world thinks otherwise. The world, and his own family, perhaps, would think your son lowered and dishonored by marrying me, and I never could consent to go among the people who could think it; so, if he married me, he would not only have to bear this odium, but to give up too, forever, his home and relatives, and friends and country, and it was for these reasons I refused to marry him--not for an instant because I felt myself unworthy."

It was plain that these earnest words had moved her companion deeply, and that she felt a desire to hear more.

"Tell me the whole story," she said. "This you have promised to do, and you have made me eager to hear it. Remember how little I have been told.

I do not even know your name."

With the full gaze of her sorrowful eyes upon the elder woman's face, she said quietly:

"My name is Christine."

There was an infinite proud calm in her voice, and in the same tone she went on:

"I bore throughout my childhood and my young girl days another name that seems in no sense to belong to me now. That child and girl, Christine Verrone, is not in any way myself. It seems only a sweet memory of a dear young creature, nearer akin to the birds, and the winds, and the flowers than to me. I cannot feel I ought to take her name, and pa.s.s myself for her. For three years I bore another name, but it is one my very lips refuse to utter now, and I never had a right to it. The one name that I feel is really mine is just Christine--the name that was given to the little baby, on whose forehead the sign of the cross was made soon after she came into this sad world, to taste of its most awful sorrow and to grow into the woman that I am. I have always loved it, because, in sound, it seemed to bring me near to Christ--the dear Christ who has never forsaken me since I have borne His sign, who has been through all my loving, dear Brother, knowing and understanding all and grieving that I had to suffer so. He is with me still. He will stay with me if I have to give up earthly love and all that can make life happy. I know He has let it all happen to me, and that it must be for my good. I know I am as pure in His eyes as when I was that little baby, baptized in His name, bearing the humanity He bore. You may decide my earthly happiness as you choose. I am not comfortless. I know now the extent of His perfect power to comfort, since I find that He can support me through the supreme trial of giving up the man I love. It is in our darkest hour He comes closest," she said, as if in a sort of ecstasy.

"He is here right with me now, strengthening and blessing me. I can feel His hands on my head. They actually press and touch me."

The fervor of her voice, the exaltation of her look, and the extreme realism of the words she used were indescribably awing and agitating to her companion, to whom such evidences in connection with religious feeling were utterly unprecedented. She saw that the source of this deep emotion was utter despair of earthly happiness, as, in truth, it was.

From the moment that Christine had noted the change in her companion, which had followed her partial confession, she felt that her doom was sealed, and it was under the influence of this conviction that she had spoken. She felt anxious now to finish the interview and get away, that she might look her sorrow in the face, without the feeling of strange eyes upon her, and that she might gather strength for her parting with the man she loved.

Her last words had been followed by a thrilling silence which the other felt herself powerless to break. It was Christine who spoke.

"I promised your son that I would tell you the history of my life," she said. "I can give it to you very briefly. I was as innocent and unknowing as a little child when I was taken from the convent where I was educated, and married by my father to a man I scarcely knew. I suppose I was a burden to my father and he wanted to get rid of me. He told me that the whole of my mother's little fortune had been spent on my education, and that he had no home to take me to, and that I must marry. The young man he chose for me was good-looking and kind, though he did not speak my language, and I knew almost nothing of his. My father did everything. He a.s.sured me this man adored me and would do everything to make me happy--would always take care of me and give me a beautiful home in his land beyond the sea. I was ignorant of marriage as a baby. It was easy to get up a girlish fancy for the young man thus presented to my childish imagination, and I consented willingly. I had a lot of charming clothes ordered for my trousseau, and I was as delighted as a child. In this way I was married--"

"Ah, you were really married!" interrupted her companion, the cloud on her face beginning to clear away. Christine saw it with a tinge of bitterness in her gentle heart.

"No," she said, almost coldly, "I was not really married. I thought so, and for three years I struggled through pain and woe and horror to do my duty to the man to whom I believed myself bound by the holy and indissoluble tie of marriage. I was ignorant, but somehow I had imbibed from every source ever opened to me a deep sense of the sacredness and eternity of that bond. So I fought and struggled on, feeling that truth to that obligation was my one anchor in a sea of trouble. I thought when I came here I could tell you some of the things I felt and endured, but I cannot. There would be no use. The bare fact is enough for a woman's heart. When my child came I fixed my whole soul's devotion on him. He was always delicate and feeble, but I loved him as, perhaps, a strong and healthy child could not have been loved. His father never noticed him at all, except to show that he thought him a burden. That was the final touch of complete alienation. Love--or what I had once called by that name--was gone long ago. We had become extremely poor--every cent of the princ.i.p.al had been spent in the most reckless way--oh, I can't tell you all that. Your son will tell you if you ask him. I think a sort of mental lack was at the back of it. I must hurry; I can't bear to go over it all now. I met your son on the steamer coming over, and he was kind to me then, suspecting, perhaps, how things were tending. Long after I met him again, accidentally, and he found out how wretched and poor I was, with my baby ill, and in need almost of the necessaries of life. He gave me sittings at his studio, then, and paid me for them--larger sums, I suppose, than they were worth. At any rate, he and a good doctor and an old servant helped me through my trouble when my baby died and was buried. Then--oh, I am almost done with it now, thank G.o.d!" she said, with a great sobbing breath--"it came to your son's knowledge, professionally, that another woman claimed the man I supposed to be my husband, and he was about to be tried for--" she hesitated before the word, and could not utter it. "Then--it was months ago--he took me to Mrs. Murray, who took care of me through all the misery and wretchedness of those first weeks, and afterward got me work to do that I might make my own living. There I have been, in my sad peace and safety, ever since--a broken-hearted, wretched, nameless woman, and as such your son loved me. I returned his love with all the fire and strength of an utterly unexpended force. I had never loved before. I never felt the power of that love so mighty as now, in this moment that I give him up."