"No," said Elise, shrinking back amazed from her companion. "I will not go with you to insult that good man."
"You will go with me—not to his house, then! Come, Elise, we must talk about this. You must help me untie this knot. I cannot imagine how I ever permitted things to take their chance. I have never heard of a sillier superstition than I seem to have encouraged. Talk about faith! Let a man act up to light and take the consequences. I can see clear enough now. You never looked for this to happen, Elise?"
She shook her head. Indeed, she never had—no, not for a moment.
"To think I should have permitted it to go on!"
"But you did let it go on—and I—consented. Do not let me forget that," she exclaimed. "I will go home, Albert."
"Ha, Elise! I wish I could feel more confidence in your teachers when you get there."
"I need no one to tell me what my duty is just here," she answered.
"Have you ever loved me, child? Child! I am talking to a rock. You do not yield to this?" He waved the letter aloft, and as if he would dash it from him. Elise looked at him, and did not speak. "Sister Benigna will of course feel called upon to bless the Lord," said he. "But Wenck shall find a way out of this difficulty. Then we will have done with them both, my own."
"Am I to have no voice in this matter?" she asked. "What if I say—"
Spener grasped her hand so suddenly that, as if in her surprise she had forgotten what she was about to say, Elise added, "Sister Benigna is my best friend. She knows nothing about the lot."
"Does not?"
"I told you, Albert, that it was to be so. And—you do not mean to threaten Mr. Wenck?"
"I mean to have him find a way out of this difficulty. He ought to have said to your father that this lot business belongs to a period gone by. He did hint at it. I supposed, of course, that he would see the thing came out right, since he let it go on."
"Did you then believe it was only a play or a trick?" exclaimed Elise indignantly.
"Not quite, but I did not suppose that we were a company who would stand by an adverse decision. You know, if you are the Elise I have loved so long, that I must love you always—that I am not going to give you up. Your father was bent on the test, but look at him and tell me if he expected this turn. He is twenty years older than he was yesterday. Folks used to resort to the lot in deciding about marriages, and it was all well enough if they didn't care how it turned out, or hadn't faith to believe in their own ability to choose. A pretty way of doing business, though! Suppose I had tried it on this place! I have always asked for God's blessing, and tried to act so that I need not blush when I asked it; but a man must know his own mind, he must act with decision. I say again, I don't like your teachers, Elise. Between Sister Benigna and Mr. Wenck, now, what would be my chances if I could submit to such a pair?"
"You and I have no quarrel," said Elise gently. "I suppose that you acted in good faith. You know how much I care—how humiliated I shall feel if you attack in any way a man so good as Mr. Wenck. You do not understand Sister Benigna."
It was well that she had these to speak of, and that she need not confine herself to the main thought before them, for Albert could do anything he attempted. Had not her father always said, "Let Spener alone for getting what he wants: he'll have it, but he's above-board and honest;" and what hopes, heaven-cleaving, had spread wing the instant her eyes met his!
"It is easy to say that I do not understand," said he. "One has only to assume that another is so excellent and virtuous a character as to be beyond your comprehension, and then your mouth is stopped."
"Ah, how bitter you are!" exclaimed Elise. Her voice was full of pain.
Spener silently reproached himself, and said, with a tenderness that was irresistible, "You don't know what temptations beset a man in business and everywhere, Elise. It would be easier far to lie down and die, I have thought sometimes, than to stand up and meet the enemy like a man. You will never convince me that my duty is to let you go, to give you up. I can think of nothing so wicked."
These words, which had a joyful sound to which she could not seal her ears, made Elise stop suddenly, afraid of Albert, afraid of herself. "I think," she said after a moment, "we had best not walk together any longer. There is nothing we can say that will satisfy ourselves or ought to satisfy each other."
"Do you mean that you accept this decision?" said he.
"I promised, Albert. So did you."
"We will not talk about it. But we can at least walk together, Elise. You need not speak. What you confessed just now is true—you cannot say anything to the purpose."
So they walked on together. Silently, past all Spenersberg's dwelling-places they walked, till they came to the cemetery, and ascending the hill they strolled about that pleasant place among the graves, and thought, perhaps, How blessed are the dead! and oh to be lying there in a dreamless sleep beneath the blooming wild roses, and where dirges were sounding through the cedars day and night! Elise might have thought thus, but not her companion. He was the last man to wish to pass from the scene of his successes merely because a great failure threatened him. Looking upon the slight young figure beside him and her grave sweet face, a wrathful contempt was aroused within him that he should have allowed himself to be placed in a situation so absurd. As they walked down the hill again, he startled his companion by a merry outbreak. "Tell me you are not mine!" he said: "there never was a joke like it!"
CHAPTER V.
SISTER BENIGNA
On her return home Elise found Sister Benigna seated at the piano, attuning herself, as she said, after her work among the restive children of her school.
When she looked upon her friend and recalled the bitter words Albert had spoken against her, Elise felt their injustice. It was true, as she had told him, he did not understand Sister Benigna.
Sitting down beside the window, Elise began to busy herself over the dainty basket she was elaborately decorating. After a few moments Sister Benigna left the piano and stood looking at Elise and her work. She had something to say, but how should she say it? how approach the heart which had wrapped itself up in sorrow and surrounded itself with the guards of silence?
Presently Elise looked at her, but not until she had so long resisted the inclination to do so that there was something like violence in the effort. When her eyes met the gaze of Sister Benigna the warm blood rushed to her cheeks, and she looked quickly down again. Did Sister Benigna know yet about the letter Mr. Wenck had written?
A sad smile appeared on Benigna's face. She shook her head. If she did not know what had happened, she no doubt understood that some kind of trouble had entered the house.
Drawing a roll of needlework from her pocket, she quietly occupied herself with it until Elise, unable to endure the silence longer, said, "Oh, Sister Benigna, is it not time we did something about the Sisters' House? I have been reading about one: I forget where it is. What a beautiful Home you and I could make for poor people, and sick girls not able to work, and old women! We ought to have such a Home in Spenersberg. I have been thinking all day it is what we must have, and it is time we set about it."
"I do not agree with you," was the quiet answer. "There is no real need for it here, and perhaps there never will be. Work that is so unnecessary might better be avoided. In Spenersberg it is better that the poor and the old and the sick should be cared for in their homes, by their own households: there is no want here."
"Will you read what I have been reading?" said Elise, hesitating, not willing yet to give up the project which looked so full of promise.
"I know all about Sisters' Houses, and they are excellent institutions, but if you will go from house to house here you will find that you would probably keep house by yourself a long time if you opened such an establishment. No, no: you have your work all prepared for you, and I certainly have