ustible.

Althea anticipated a storm; but she braved it, and asked Thornton's
consent to her baptism. She might as well have asked the mountain to
come down and be bathed in the sea. He was fierce as the whirlwind,
unrelenting as death. His words of scorn and anger poured down like a
water-spout, but unlike this element of destruction, his fury became not
spent.

He forbade her attendance at the closing exercises of the Mission, or
any further discourse with the Jesuit. Of this Jesuit, he had jocosely
asserted he was going to take lessons in the art of intrigue. He deemed
the lesson had been given without his seeking, and it was no less
galling from his secret conviction that it was all his own fault.

Had his wife asked his permission to join either of the other sects, he
would have answered her with an indifferent laugh and sneer. _That_
would have been of no consequence. She could have been a Methodist, or a
Universalist, anything but a Catholic! Like a Pagan Diocletian, he would
have gathered all Catholics together, and thrown them to wild beasts.
The coming election had lost for him its interest. It had cost him dear.
Everything might go to Sharp and the dogs; one thing was certain--his
wife should not become a Catholic. He remained steadily at Vine Cottage,
a Cerberus to guard his domain. The Missioner would leave Windsor on the
morrow. Althea wrote him a brief note, which she sent by Mary, asking
him what she should do.

His reply was this verbal message: "Wait--and trust in God!" Mary
delivered this faithfully, and added:

"He said, ma'am, to tell you that he would never forget to pray for you
at every Mass he should say."

"God will hear _his_ prayer," was Althea's thought, and she was
comforted.

The very spirit of evil seemed to have taken possession of Mr. Rush. He
was more and more resolved to have entirely annihilated every trace of
the new faith in his wife. For this purpose he sent far and near, until
he had literally the proverbial "house full of ministers." His wife was
under exhortation first from one, then from another, every hour in the
day.

First the Presbyterian, then the Methodist, the Baptist, even the
Spiritualist expounded and sermonized upon the several beauties of the
Protestant faith. Their principal ammunition, however, was expended in
besieging, battering and anathematizing the Catholic Church.

Every minister had a book for her to read, at home in his library, which
he would