“She was pretty, Boy—­at least I thought so.”

“Big or little?”

“Tall—­very tall.”

“I like tall, magnificent women.  There’s something majestic about them.  I hope the Princess Elodie”—­and the Boy made a wry face—­“will be quite six foot tall.  I could never love a woman small either in body or mind.  I am sure I should have liked your Isabella, Father Paul.  Majestic women of majestic minds for me, for there you have the royal stamp of nature that makes some women born to the purple.  Yes, I am sure I should have liked Isabella.  Tell me more.”

Paul Verdayne smiled.  He should hardly have considered Isabella Waring in any degree “majestic”—­but he did not say so.

“She was charmingly healthy and robust—­athletic, you know, and all that—­with light fluffy hair.  I believe she used to wear it in a net.  Blue eyes, of course—­thoroughly English, you know—­and a fine comrade.  Liked everything that I liked, as most girls at that age didn’t, naturally.  Of course, mother couldn’t appreciate her.  She wasn’t her style at all.  And she naturally thought—­mother did, I mean—­that when she sent me away ‘for my health’”—­the Boy smiled—­“that I’d forget all about her.”

Verdayne began to think he wasn’t telling it well after all.  He looked out of the window.  It was getting hard to meet the frank look in the Boy’s blue eyes.

“Forget!” and there was a fine scorn in the tones of the young enthusiast.  “But you didn’t! you didn’t!  I’m sure you didn’t!”

The romantic story appealed strongly to the Boy’s mood.

“But why didn’t you marry her when you came back, Father Paul?  Did she die?”

“No, she didn’t die.  She is still living, I believe.”

“Then why didn’t you marry her, Father Paul?  Did they still oppose it?  Surely when you came home and they saw you had not forgotten, it was different.  Tell me how it was when you came home.”

And Paul Verdayne, in a voice he tried his best to make very sad and heart-broken, replied with downcast eyes, “When I came home, Boy, I found Isabella Waring ready to marry a curate, and happy over the prospect of an early wedding.  So, you see, my share in her life was over.”

The Boy’s face fell.  He had not anticipated this ending to the romance.  How could any woman ever have proved faithless to his Father Paul!  And how could he, poor man, still keep his firm, dauntless belief in the goodness and truth of human nature after so bitter an experience as this!  It shocked his sense of right and justice—­this story.  He wished he had not asked to hear it.

“Thank you for telling me, Father Paul.  It was kind of you to open your past life to me like this, and very unkind of me to ask what I should have known would cost you such pain to tell.  I am truly sorry for it all, Father Paul.  Thank you again—­and forgive me!”

“It’s a relief to open one’s heart, sometimes, to one who can sympathize,” replied Verdayne, with a deep sigh.  But he felt like a miserable hypocrite.