Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/162

 humble friends talk of him, and that she was wont to prolong these conversations to a remarkable length.

That she liked to be alone—and longed to be alone with him.

That she had developed an abnormal curiosity about that vague old love affair of his—and was afraid to ask any one concerning it.

Having discovered that in such lines her inclinations lay, Miss Twombly conscientiously refrained from doing any of these things. She plunged into work feverishly for a day or two, even though at the end of that time she knew she must laboriously fight her battle all over again. It was humiliating to a proud spirit, but it had to be endured. Dr. Schuyler did not materially aid the situation when, having himself fought a similar fight in vain, he came to her like a man and asked her to be his wife.

Alice Twombly took her Life Work as a divinely-appointed mission. Never before had she been tempted from it. Here, she reflected, was a Test, to try her soul. Perhaps, who knows, the devil himself was in it! True, she had taken no vows of celibacy. But who did not know that matrimony blasted woman's career? What of her poor, what of her place in the Third Order, if she became Dr. Schuyler's