LITMIR.BIZ

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me, and to tempt me?”

      The word came from her before she knew it, and her face became scarlet; but he uttered no protest, and raised his white hand in deprecation.

      “Tempt you? God forbid!”

      “I did not mean that,” she murmured, in confusion; “but you must know, you cannot fail to know, that it is not right for a married woman to receive such expressions of sympathy, however spiritual. It is that which makes me hate the Catholic Church. The priest promises you his office, and too often makes mischief under the guise of religion.”

      “Do you accuse me of doing so?” he demanded, in the same sad, calm voice.

      “No; but you should remember that you have not the custody of my soul, and I have no right to influence your actions. Come,” she continued, with rather a forced laugh, “talk to me like a true English clergyman. Tell me of the old women of the village, and their ailments; ask me for a subscription to give to your new soup kitchen; talk to me as if Mr. Haldane were listening to us – of your schools, your parish troubles – and you shall find me an eager listener!”

      “I will talk of anything, Ellen, so long as I may talk to you.”

      Again that manner of despairing certainty, of assured and fatal sympathy. The man was incorrigible.

      She waited impatiently for some minutes, but finding he did not speak again, she held out her hand.

      “Since you have nothing more to tell me,” she observed lightly, “I think I will say good morning. I am going to order the carriage and drive to Omberley.”

      “When may I come again?”

      “When you have anything really parochial to say to me. Please go now.”

      Their eyes met, and hers sank beneath his own.

      As he crossed towards the door it opened, and Baptisto appeared upon the threshold.

      “Did you ring, senora?”

      At the sight of the Spaniard’s dull impressive face Mrs. Haldane started violently, and went a little pale. She had heard nothing of his return, and he came like an apparition.

      “Baptisto! What are you doing here? I thought – ”

      She paused in wonder, while the Spaniard inclined his head and bowed profoundly.

      “I was taken with a vertigo at the station, and the senor permitted me to return.”

      “Then your master has gone alone?”

      “Yes, senora.”

      “Very well. Order the carriage at once. I am going out.”

      Baptisto bowed and retired, quickly closing the door.

      Santley, who had stood listening during the above conversation, now prepared to follow, but, glancing at Ellen, saw that she was unusually agitated.

      “That is a sinister-looking fellow,” he remarked. “I am afraid he has frightened you.”

      “Indeed, no,” she replied; “though I confess I was startled at his unexpected return. Good-bye.”

      “Good-bye,” he said, again taking her hand and holding it up a moment in his own.

      Passing from the drawing-room, he again came face to face with Baptisto, who was lurking in the lobby, but who drew aside with a respectful bow, to allow the clergyman to pass.

      He crossed the hall, descended the stone steps of the portico, and walked slowly towards the lodge. As he passed the ruined chapel, its shadows seemed to fall upon his spirit and leave it in ominous darkness. He shivered slightly, and drew his cloak about him, then with his eyes cast down he thoughtfully walked on.

      He did not glance back. Had he done so, he would have seen Baptisto standing on the steps of the Manor house, watching him with a sinister smile.

      CHAPTER XV. CONJURATION

      It was a chill day in early autumn, and as Charles Santley passed along the dark avenue of the Manor his path was strewn here and there with freshly fallen leaves. Dark shadows lay on every side, and the heaven above was full of a sullen, cheerless light. It was just the day for a modern Faust, in the course of his noonday walk, to encounter, in some fancied guise, canine or human, the evil one of old superstition.

      Be that as it may, Santley knew at last that the hour of his temptation was over, and that the evil one was not far away. He knew it, by the sullen acquiescence of evil of his own soul; by the deliberate and despairing precision with which he had chosen the easy and downward path; by the sense of darkness which already obliterated the bright moral instincts in his essentially religious mind. He had spoken the truth when he said he would follow Ellen Haldane anywhere, even to the eternal pit itself. Her beauty possessed him and disturbed him with the joy of impure thoughts; and now that he perceived his own power to trouble her peace of mind, he rejoiced at the strength of his passion with a truly diabolic perversity.

      As he came out of the lodge gate he saw, far away over the fields, the spire of his own church.

      He laughed to himself.

      But the man’s faith in spiritual things, so far from being shaken, was as strong as ever. His own sense of moral deterioration, of spiritual backsliding, only made him believe all the more fervently in the heaven from which he had fallen, or might choose to fall. For it is surely a mistake to picture, as so many poets have pictured, the evil spirit as one ignorant of or insensible to good. Far wiser is the theology which describes Satan as the highest of angelic spirits – the spirit which, above all others, had beheld and contemplated the Godhead, and had then, in sheer revolt and negation, deliberately and advisedly decided its own knowledge and rejected its own truthright. Santley was, in his basest moods, essentially a godly man – a man strangely curious of the beauty of goodness, and capable of infinite celestial dreams. If, like many another, he confused the flesh and the spirit, he did no more than many sons of Eve have done.

      As he walked slowly along he mused, somewhat to this effect – “I love this woman. In her heart she loves me. Her superior spiritual endowments are mystically alive to those I myself possess. Her husband is a clod, an unbeliever, with no spiritual promptings. In his sardonic presence, her aspirations are chilled, frozen at the very fountain-head; whereas, in mine, all the sweetness and the power of her nature are aroused, though with a certain irritation. If I persist, she must yield to the slow moral mesmerism of my passion, and eventually fall. Is this necessarily evil? Am I of set purpose sinning? Is it not possible that even a breach of the moral law might, under certain conditions, lead us both to a higher religious place – yes, even to a deeper and intenser consciousness of God?”

      And again – “What is sin? Surely it is better than moral stagnation, which is death. There are certain deflections from duty which, like the side stroke of a bird’s wing, may waft us higher. In the arms of this woman, I should surely be nearer God than crawling alone on the bare path of duty, loving nothing, hoping nothing, becoming nothing. What is it that Goethe says of the Eternal Feminine which lead us ever upward and onward? Which was the highest, Faust before he loved Marguerite, or Faust after he passed out of the shadow of his sin into the sphere of imperial and daring passion? I believe in God, I love this woman. Out of that belief, and that love, shall I not become a living soul?”

      Was this the man’s own musing, or rather the very devil whispering in his ear? From such fragmentary glimpses of his mind as have been given, we can at least guess the extent of his intellectual degradation.

      As he walked along the country road, his pale countenance became seraphic; just so may the face of Lucifer have looked when he plumed his wings for deliberate flight from heaven.

      He stepped into a roadside farm and had a glass of milk, which the good woman of the place handed to him with a sentiment of adoration; he looked so gentle, so at peace with all living things. His white hand rested for a moment on the head of her little girl, in gentle benediction. He had never felt more tenderly disposed to all creation than at that moment, when he was prepared to dip a pen into his own hearts blood, and sign the little promissory note which Mephistopheles carries, always ready, in his pocket. He had hated

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