"But I should be sorry for that," said Angela's soft, caressing voice, into which a tremor stole from time to time that made it doubly sweet. "I shall want to see you again. Promise me that you will come back, Brian—some day."
"Some day?" he repeated, mournfully. "Well, some day, Angela, when you can look on me without so much pain as you must needs feel now, any day when you have need of me. But, as I am going so very soon, will you tell me yourself whether Netherglen is a place that you hold in utter abhorrence now? Would it hurt you to make Netherglen your home? Could you and my mother find happiness—or at least peace—if you lived here together? or would it be too great a trial for you to bear?"
"It rests with you to decide, Angela," said Mrs. Luttrell from her sofa. "I have no choice; it signifies little to me whether I go or stay. If it would pain you to live at Netherglen, say so; and we will choose another home."
"Pain me?" said Angela. "To stay here—in Richard's home?"
"Would you dislike it?" asked Mrs. Luttrell.
The girl came to her side, and put her arms round the mother's neck. Mrs. Luttrell's face softened curiously as she did so; she laid one of her hands upon Angela's shining hair with a caressing movement.
"Dislike it? It would be my only happiness," said Angela. She stopped, and then went on with soft vehemence—"To think that I was in his house, that I looked on the things that he used to see every day, that I could sometimes do the thing that he would have liked to see me doing—it is all I could wish for, all that life could give me now! Yes, yes, let us stay."
"It's perhaps not so good for you as one might wish," said Mrs. Luttrell, regarding her tenderly. "You had perhaps better have a change for a time; there is no reason why you should live for ever in the past, like an old woman, Angela. The day will come when you may wish to make new ties for yourself—new interests——"
Angela's whisper reached her ear alone.
"'Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee,'" she murmured in the words of the widowed Moabitess, "'for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God...'"