"Oh, perhaps not," said Joyce, gently. "We must hope while there is life. We can do nothing; he is beyond us. We must submit ourselves to whatever is God's will."
She was right. Perhaps for the first time in my life I felt all the awful force of it—that we could do nothing, absolutely nothing; that we must submit ourselves.
But why was it God's will? Again it angered me, as it had angered me once before, that Joyce should be able to submit herself apparently so easily to what was God's will. I was unjust. There were tears on her cheeks and mine were dry. We were different, that was all.
"Come," said she, turning again to the squire, "he is impatient."
She turned up the stairs, flitting softly in her blue flannel dressing-gown, with the golden hair slipping a little from its smooth coils.
The squire followed. I sat down on the old oaken bench below to wait.
"You, you too, Meg," said she, turning round. The oak staircase was dark, but a yellow ray from the oil-lamp hung on the wainscoting showed her face surprised. Mother's voice came from above, and she ran on up the stairs.
The squire came back again to me. "Come, dear," said he—and even at that solemn moment I could not help noticing the word of tenderness that had unconsciously slipped from him. "I want you to come, because afterwards you would be sorry you had delayed. When you see him you will not be afraid."
He took my hand and led me up the stairs, so that we entered father's room together.