Her tongue was parched: and when Margaret followed her up-stairs, she found her drinking water, as if she had been three days deep in the Great Desert.
“Can you tell me now,” asked Margaret, “what Mrs. Rowland has been saying to you?”
“No, not at present: better wait. Margaret! what do you think now?”
“I think that all looks brighter than it did this morning; but what a wretched day it has been!”
“You found it so, did you? Oh, Margaret, I have longed every hour to lie down to sleep in that wood, and never wake again!”
“I do not wonder: but you will soon feel better. The sleep from which you will wake to-morrow morning will do nearly as well. We must sleep to-night, and hope for good news in the morning.”
“No good news will ever come to me again,” sighed Hester. “No, no; I do not quite mean that. You need not look at me so. It is ungrateful to say such a thing at this moment. Come: I am ready to go down to tea. It is really getting dark. I thought this day never would come to an end.”
The evening was wearisome enough. Mrs. Grey asked how Mrs. Rowland had behaved, and Sophia was beginning to tell, when her father checked her, reminding her that she had been enjoying Mrs. Rowland’s hospitality. This was all he said, but it was enough to bring on one of Sophia’s interminable fits of crying. The children were cross with fatigue: Mrs. Grey thought her husband hard upon Sophia; and, to complete the absurdity of the scene, Hester’s and Margaret’s tears proved uncontrollable. The sight of Sophia’s set them flowing; and though they laughed at themselves for the folly of weeping from mere sympathy, this did not mend the matter. Mrs. Grey seemed on the verge of tears herself, when she observed that she had expected a cheerful evening after a lonely and anxious day. A deep sob from the three answered to this observation, and they all rose to go to their apartments. Hester was struck by the peculiar tender pressure of the hand given her by Mr. Grey, as she offered him her mute good-night. It caused her a fresh burst of grief when she reached her own room.
Margaret was determined not to go to rest without knowing what it was that Mrs. Rowland had said to her sister. She pressed for it now, hoping that it would rouse Hester from more painful thoughts.
“Though I have been enjoying that woman’s hospitality, as Mr. Grey says,” declared Hester, “I must speak of her as I think, to you. Oh, she has been so insolent!”
“Insolent to you! How? Why?”
“Nay: you had better ask her why. Her confidence was all about her brother. She seems to think—she did not say so, or I should have known better how to answer her, but she seems to think that her brother is—(I can hardly speak it even to you, Margaret!)—is in some way in danger from me. Now, you and I know that he cares no more for me than for any one of the people who were there to-day; and yet she went on telling me, and I could not stop her, about the views of his family for him!”
“What views?”
“Views which, I imagine, it by no means follows that he has for himself. If she has been impertinent to me, she has been even more so to him. I wonder how she dares meddle in his concerns as she does.”
“Well, but what views?” persisted Margaret.
“Oh, about his marrying:—that he is the darling of his family—that large family interests hang upon his marrying—that all his relations think it is time he was settling, and that he told her last week that he was of that opinion himself:—and then she went on to say that there was the most delightful accordance in their views for him;—that they did not much value beauty—that they should require for him something of a far higher order than beauty, and which indeed was seldom found with it—”
“Insolent creature! Did she say that to you?”
“Indeed she did: and that her brother’s wife must be of a good family, with a fortune worthy of his own; and, naturally, of a county family.”
“A county family!” said Margaret, half laughing. “What matters county or city, when two people are watching over one another for life and death, and for hereafter?”
“With such people as Mrs. Rowland,” said Hester, “marriage is a very superficial affair. If family, fortune, and equipage are but right, the rest may be left to Providence. Temper, mind, heart—. The worst of all, however, was her ending—or what was made her ending by our being interrupted.”
“Well! what was her finish?”
“She put her face almost under my bonnet, as she looked smiling at me, and said there was a young lady—she wished she could tell me all about it—the time would come when she might—there was a sweet girl, beloved by them all for many years, from her very childhood, whom they had hopes of receiving, at no very distant time, as Philip’s wife.”
“I do not believe it,” cried Margaret. After a pause, she added, “Do you believe it, Hester?”
“I am sure I do not know. I should not rate Mrs. Rowland’s word very highly: but this would be such a prodigious falsehood! It is possible, however, that she may believe it without its being true. Or, such a woman might make the most, for the occasion, of a mere suspicion of her own.”
“I do not believe it is true,” repeated Margaret.
“At all events,” concluded Hester, “nothing that Mrs. Rowland says is worth regarding. I was foolish to let myself be ruffled by her.”
Margaret tried to take the lesson home, but it was in vain. She was ruffled; and, in spite of every effort, she did believe in the existence of the nameless young lady. It had been a day of trouble; and thus was it ending in fresh sorrow and fear.
Morris came in, hesitated at the door, was told she might stay, and immediately busied herself in the brushing of hair and the folding of clothes. Many tears trickled down, and not a word was spoken, till all the offices of the toilet were finished. Morris then asked, with a glance at the book-shelf, whether she should go or stay.
“Stay, Morris,” said Hester, gently. “You shall not suffer for our being unhappy to-night. Margaret, will you, can you read?”
Margaret took the volume in which it was the sisters’ common practice to read together, and with Morris at night. While Morris took her seat, and reverently composed herself to hear, Margaret turned to the words which have stilled many a tempest of grief, from the moment when they were first uttered to mourners, through a long course of centuries, “Let not your heart be troubled.” “Believe in God; believe in me.” Morris sometimes spoke on these occasions. She loved to hear of the many mansions in the House of the Father of all; and she said that though it might seem to her young ladies that their parents had gone there full soon, leaving them to undergo trouble by themselves, yet she had no doubt they should all be at peace together, sooner or later, and their passing troubles seem as nothing. Even this simple and obvious remark roused courage in the sisters. They remembered what their father had said to them about his leaving them to encounter the serious business and trials of life, and how they had promised to strive to be wise and trustful, and to help each other. This day the serious business and trials of life had manifestly begun: they must strengthen themselves and each other to meet them. They agreed upon this, and in a mood of faith and resolution fell asleep.
Chapter Ten.
Mediation.
Mr. Hope’s case turned out more favourably than any of his attendants and friends had ventured to anticipate. For some days the symptoms continued as alarming as at first; but from the hour that he began to amend, his progress towards recovery was without drawback, and unusually rapid. Within a month, the news circulated through the village, that he had been safely brought home to his own lodgings; and the day after, the ladies at Mr. Grey’s were startled by seeing him alight from a gig at the door, and walk up the