Romayne held out his hand.
“I hope I have not thoughtlessly hurt you?” he said.
Penrose took the offered hand, and pressed it fervently.
He tried to speak—and suddenly shuddered, like a man in pain.
“I am not very well this morning,” he stammered; “a turn in the garden will do me good.”
Romayne’s doubts were confirmed by the manner in which Penrose left him.
Something had unquestionably happened, which his friend shrank from communicating to him.
He sat down again at his desk and tried to read.
The time passed—and he was still left alone.
When the door was at last opened it was only Stella who entered the room.
“Have you seen Penrose?” he asked.
The estrangement between them had been steadily widening of late.
Romayne had expressed his resentment at his wife’s interference between Penrose and himself by that air of contemptuous endurance which is the hardest penalty that a man can inflict on the woman who loves him.
Stella had submitted with a proud and silent resignation—the most unfortunate form of protest that she could have adopted toward a man of Romayne’s temper.
When she now appeared, however, in her husband’s study, there was a change in her expression which he instantly noticed.
She looked at him with eyes softened by sorrow.
Before she could answer his first question, he hurriedly added another.
“Is Penrose really ill?”
“No, Lewis. He is distressed.”
“About what?”
“About you, and about himself.”
“Is he going to leave us?”
“Yes.”
“But he will come back again?”
Stella took a chair by her husband’s side.
“I am truly sorry for you, Lewis,” she said.
“It is even a sad parting for Me.
If you will let me say it, I have a sincere regard for dear Mr. Penrose.”
Under other circumstances, this confession of feeling for the man who had sacrificed his dearest aspiration to the one consideration of her happiness, might have provoked a sharp reply.
But by this time Romayne had really become alarmed.
“You speak as if Arthur was going to leave England,” he said.
“He leaves England this afternoon,” she answered, “for Rome.”
“Why does he tell this to you, and not to me?” Romayne asked.
“He cannot trust himself to speak of it to you.
He begged me to prepare you—”
Her courage failed her.
She paused.
Romayne beat his hand impatiently on the desk before him.
“Speak out!” he cried.
“If Rome is not the end of the journey—what is?”
Stella hesitated no longer.
“He goes to Rome,” she said “to receive his instructions, and to become personally acquainted with the missionaries who are associated with him.
They will leave Leghorn in the next vessel which sets sail for a port in Central America.
And the dangerous duty intrusted to them is to re-establish one of the Jesuit Missions destroyed by the savages years since.
They will find their church a ruin, and not a vestige left of the house once inhabited by the murdered priests.
It is not concealed from them that they may be martyred, too.
They are soldiers of the Cross; and they go—willingly go—to save the souls of the Indians, at the peril of their lives.”
Romayne rose, and advanced to the door.
There, he turned, and spoke to Stella.
“Where is Arthur?” he said.