The fire in the grate rustled and the cinders shook down.
It was then that the girl stirred as though suddenly made aware of the silence. Immediately the man's voice, cold--almost harsh, in contrast to his usual tone, startled her.
"'Rest' is not your name," he said. "You have changed your name--to further aid your escape from----"
"How do you know that?" Then the girl went on, wondering at the man's quickness of understanding. "I had not intended telling you. But it doesn't matter. Nothing seems to matter. Evidently my disguise is useless with you. No, my name is not Rest. My father was Charles Stanmore."
The man made no reply. He did not move. His keen eyes were on the red-gold hair so neatly coiled about the girl's head. His lips were compressed, and a deep frown had disturbed the usual serenity of his broad brow.
For a moment Joan bowed her head, and her hands clasped tightly as they were held toward the fire. Presently her voice sounded again. It began low, held under a forced calm.
"Is there no hope?" she implored him. "Buck said you could help me. What have I done that these things should curse my life? I only want peace--just a little peace. I am content to live and die just as I am. I desire nothing more than to be left--alone."
"Who told you--all this?" The Padre's voice had no sympathy.
"My aunt. Aunt Mercy."
"You were--happy before she told you?"
"Yes."
"Why did she tell you?"
"I don't know. At least--yes, she told me so as to warn me. So that I might avoid bringing disaster upon those whom I had no desire to hurt."
The Padre rose from his seat and crossed to where the girl was sitting. He stood for a moment just behind her chair. Then, very gently, he laid one sunburnt hand upon her shoulder.
"Little girl," he said, with a wonderful kindliness that started the long-threatened tears to the girl's eyes, "you've got a peck of trouble inside that golden head of yours. But it's all in there. There's none of it outside. Look back over all those things you've told me. Every one of them. Just show me where your hand in them lies. There is not a disaster that you have mentioned but what possesses its perfectly logical, natural cause. There is not one that has not been duplicated, triplicated, ah! dozens and dozens of times since this quaint old world of ours began. You believe it is due to your influence because a silly old woman catches you in an overwrought moment and tells you so. She has implanted a parasite in your little head that has stuck there and grown out of all proportion. Believe me, child, you cannot influence the destinies of men. You have no say in the matter. As we are made, so we must work out our own salvation. It has been your lot to witness many disasters, but had these things occurred with other girls as the central figure, would you have attributed this hideous curse to their lives? Would you? Never. But you readily attribute it to your own. I am an old man my dear; older to-day, perhaps, by far than my years call for. I have seen so much of misery and trouble that sometimes I have thought that all life is just one long sea of disaster. But it isn't--unless we choose to make it so. You are rapidly making yours such. You are naturally generous, and kind, and sympathetic. These things you have allowed to develop in you until they have become something approaching disease. Vampires sucking out all your nervous strength. Abandon these things for a while. Live the life the good God gave you. Enjoy your living moments as you were intended to enjoy them. And be thankful that the sun rises each morning, and that you can rise up from your bed refreshed and ready for the full play of heart, and mind, and limbs. Disasters will go on about you as they go on about me, and about us all. But they do not belong to us. That is just life. That is just the world and its scheme. There are lessons in all these things for us to learn--lessons for the purification of our hearts, and not diseases for our silly, weak brains. Now, little girl, I want you to promise that you will endeavor to do as I say. Live a wholesome, healthy life. Enjoy all that it is given you to enjoy. Where good can be done, do it. Where evil lies, shun it. Forget all this that lies behind you, and--Live! Evil is merely the absence of Good. Life is all Good. If we deny that good, then there is Evil. Live your life with all its blessings, and your God will bless you. This is your duty to yourself; to your fellows; to life; to your God."