The Heavenly Twins. Grand Sarah

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СКАЧАТЬ the bishop exactly in his father's precise way, "that there is something remarkable about my grandfather. He is a kind of a prophet, I imagine, to whom the Lord doesn't speak."

      Edith walked to the window, Mrs. Beale got out her handkerchief hastily; the bishop's countenance relaxed.

      "I suppose you wouldn't like us to be converted?" Angelica asked.

      "We call it perverted, dear child," said Mrs. Beale.

      "Well, they call it converted just as positively up at the castle," Angelica rejoined, not argumentatively, merely stating the fact.

      "I wonder what the angels call it," said Diavolo, looking up in their direction out of a window opposite, and then glancing at the bishop as if he thought he ought to know.

      "I don't suppose they care a button what we call it," Angelica decided off-hand, out of her own inner consciousness. "But you would not like us to be either 'con' or 'per,' would you?" she asked the bishop.

      "I am afraid I must not discuss so serious a question with you to-day," he answered. "I am very busy, and I must go back to my work."

      "I thought you looked unsettled," Angelica observed. "I know what it is when you've got to come to the drawing room, and want to be somewhere else. They won't excuse us at home as a rule, but we'll excuse you, if you like."

      "Eh—thank you," the old gentleman answered, glancing with a smile at his wife.

      "But I should think some tea would do you good," Diavolo suggested.

      "Have you not had any tea?" Edith asked, stretching her hand out toward the bell.

      "Well, yes," he answered. "We've had a little"—the tone implied, "but not nearly enough."

      "We always like your cakes, you know," said Angelica; "and ours at

       Hamilton House are generally nice; but at Morne they're sometimes sodden."

      The bishop withdrew at this point, and the children devoted the rest of their attention to the cakes.

      "Now we've got to go and settle with Mr. Ellis," Diavolo remarked to

       Angelica, yawning, as they walked their ponies out of the palace grounds.

      "Well, at any rate, we've done the celebration thoroughly," she answered, "and enjoyed it. He won't be able to help that now. Oh—by the way! here's grandpapa's ring. I forgot it."

      "It doesn't matter," said Diavolo. "He knows you'll take care of it."

      Almost at the same moment the old duke at Morne missed the ring, and remarked: "Ah, I remember, Angelica has it. She put it on her finger when she was sitting beside me this afternoon."

      "Shall I go at once to Hamilton House, and bring it back with me?" Father

       Ricardo asked, somewhat officiously.

      "No, sir, thank you," said the duke with dignity. "My grand-daughter will return the ring when it suits her convenience."

      Next day Angelica begged her father to take the ring back for her with a note of apology explaining that she had forgotten it, and expressing her regret.

CHAPTER XXI.

       Table of Contents

      Part of the old gray palace at Morningquest had been a monastery. The walls were thick, the windows gothic, the bedrooms small, the reception rooms huge, as if built for the accommodation of a whole community at a time; and with unexpected alcoves and angles and deep embrasures, all very picturesque, and also extremely inconvenient; but Edith Beale, who had been born in the palace and grown up there, under the protection of the great cathedral, as it were, and the influence of its wonderful chime, was never conscious of the inconvenience, and would not, at any rate, have exchanged it for the comfort and luxury of the best appointed modern house. The Bishop of Morningquest and Mrs. Beale had three sons, but Edith was their only daughter, their white child, their pearl; and certainly she was a lovely specimen of a well-bred English girl.

      On the day following that upon which the Heavenly Twins had celebrated the important occasion of their first spontaneous "Kow-tow," as they called it, in the early morning Edith, being still asleep, turned toward the east window of her room, the blind of which was up, and fell into a dream. The sun, as he rose, smiled in upon her. She had flung her left hand up above her head with the pink palm outward, and the fingers half bent; the right lay on the sheet beside her, palm downward, spread out, and all relaxed. Her whole attitude expressed the most complete abandonment of deep and restful sleep.

      The night had been warm, and the heavier draperies had slipped from her bed on the farther side, leaving only the sheet.

      Her warm bright hair, partly loosened from the one thick braid into which it had been plaited, fell from off the pillow to the floor on her right, and the sun, looking in, lit it up and made it sparkle. She left that window with the blind undrawn so that he might arouse her every morning; and now, as the first pale ray gleamed over her face, her eyelids quivered, and half opened, but she was still busy with her dream and did not wake. She lived in an atmosphere of dreams and of mystic old associations. Events of the days gone by were often more distinctly pictured in her mind than incidents of yesterday. Mrs. Orton Beg, her mother, and all the gentle mannered, pure-minded women among whom she had grown up, thought less of this world, even as they knew it, than of the next as they imagined it to be; and they received and treasured with perfect faith every legend, hint, and shadow of a communication which they believed to have come to them from thence. They neglected the good they might have done here in order to enjoy their bright and tranquil dreams of the hereafter. Their spiritual food was faith and hope. They kept their tempers even and unruffled by never allowing themselves to think or know, so far as it is possible with average intelligence not to do either in this world, anything that is evil of anybody. They prided themselves on only believing all that is good of their fellow-creatures; this was their idea of Christian charity. Thus they always believed the best about everybody, not on evidence, but upon principle; and then they acted as if their attitude had made their acquaintances all they desired them to be. They seemed to think that by ignoring the existence of sin, by refusing to obtain any knowledge of it, they somehow helped to check it; and they could not have conceived that their attitude made it safe to sin, so that, when they refused to know and to resist, they were actually countenancing evil and encouraging it. The kind of Christian charity from which they suffered was a vice in itself. To keep their own minds pure was the great object of their lives, which really meant to save themselves from the horror and pain of knowing.

      Edith, by descent, by teaching, by association, and in virtue of the complete ignorance in which she had been kept, was essentially one of that set. It is impossible for any adult creature to be more spiritually minded than she was. She lived in a state of exquisite feeling. The whole training of her mind had been so directed as to make her existence one long beatific vision, and she was unconsciously prepared to resent in her gentle way, and to banish at once, if possible, any disturbing thought that might break in upon it.

      In her dream that morning she smiled at first, and then she fairly laughed. She had met the Heavenly Twins, and they were telling her something—what was it? The most amusing thing she had ever heard them say; she knew it by the way it had made her laugh—why couldn't she repeat it? She was trying to tell her mother, СКАЧАТЬ