But Virginia was too deeply hurt to respond to the jest. To her the church and all that pertained to it was holy, and Harriet's remarks were nothing short of sacrilege.
"There," cried the latter, "I've said something perfectly awful, I suppose; hut I didn't mean to offend you, Virgie. You see I'm not used to the 'church,' as you call it. If you'll forgive me this time I'll solemnly promise not to look at Father Roquet from the time we leave New York till we arrive in Liverpool or London, or wherever we drop him; and, I was only joking, anyway."
"I cannot bear to hear you speak light- ly of such things," said Virginia, submit- ting to a shower of penitent kisses.
"Father Roquet," Harriet remarked, in one of her letters home, "seems to have no other mission in life than the safe con- voy of two charming and helpless young women to their destination over the seas. Virginia's dependence puzzles and amuses me. I don't believe she has the least idea where we are going to stop in London, or what we are going to do while there. When I question her about it, she invar- iably replies that Mother Elizabeth has arranged everything, or that Father Ro- quet will attend to it. And I must confess Father Roquet seems equal to anything. He is not one bit like my idea of a priest. In the first place, he is too good looking in spite of his gray hair, and he is per- fectly devoted to Virginia. He's been everywhere and seen everything, and is the life of the captain's table, where we are fortunate enough to be placed at meals. The stories he tells of frontier life and experiences are better than novel tales, and he's lived in Oregon, too; seems to know everybody in that part of the world worth knowing. For real, live com- pany, give me a Catholic father every time. I am thinking very seriously of becoming a fraction of the mother church myself, but don't tell Billy Spencer. He inclines to Methodism, if I haven't for- gotten, and I may have to fall back upon Billy after all, though I haven't given up the hope of capturing a title yet."
"Oh! dear," sighed Mrs. Dalgren, when she read this effusion of her second daugh- ter. "Will Harriet never be serious or sensible? I wish she would write letters
that I could read to the children without having to skip whole pages." But she, nevertheless, found Harriet's vivacious ac- counts very interesting, and, if she had confessed the truth to herself, preferred them to Virginia's sweetly formal ones. She dreamed many dreams, this loving mother, in the quiet seclusion of the Ore- gon homestead, where her girls were growing up around her, all of them with increasing promise of beautiful woman- hood. There were four younger than Har- riet, not to mention the boys, and she is to be pardoned if she hoped that Har- riet's predictions about the duke might be realized. If they were not, there al- ways remained, of course, Billy Spencer. And any girl might do worse than to take Billy, with his cattle ranch on Camp Creek, and his bands of horses in the range "east of the mountains." As for Virginia, it was vaguely understood by her family that Robert had left her well provided for, and a young widow with money and no incumbrances had nothing left to wish for in Mrs. Dalgren's esti- mation of the case. It had been just the reverse with her. She had had the in- cumbrances and very little else, and the struggle had been a desperate one till that unexpected and mysterious check had come as if to console her for the loss of her firstborn. Since then things had gone fairly well; though, with so many to clothe and to educate, careful economy was always needed in the administration of the affairs of the homestead.
The story of Virginia's romantic mar- riage was almost forgotten in the neigh- borhood. It had turned out so disappoint- ingly well that it had early ceased to be interesting.
The Lamonts had drifted out of the state, having, through some questionable speculations, lost both wealth and much- vaunted respectability, and everybody said: "I told you so; I always knew there was something not just right about that family. They were altogether too respectable to last."
And so time had gone and continued to go. Virginia's year abroad lengthened to two. They were having the loveliest time in the world, Harriet wrote. They went everywhere, and saw everything and everybody worth seeing. They lived well
