Mrs. Judson drew herself back with haughty uprightness, and pointed her finger at the girl.
“You compare yourself with me!” she exclaimed,—“with me?”
“No,” answered the girl, standing before her aunt, pale and proud as herself, but with a pride that had a relenting dignity in it, that sprung from the womanliness of her nature so fearfully outraged,—“no, aunt, I do not compare myself with you,—not for a moment. Let that Great Being make the comparison, who looks upon us both as we stand: you, a rich, proud woman, turning your sister’s child with insult into the street; I, a poor, friendless girl, feeble from sickness, tortured with anxiety, without shelter, and without a human being to care for me—let God make the comparison between you and me. Let him judge us two!”
The young woman turned, as she spoke, and walked from the room, leaving her aunt standing like a statue in the clear gas-light. The passion of that young creature had paralyzed her. She, so unused to contradiction, so imperial in her household, had she lived to be thus braved? What right had that miserable wanderer to call upon the God that she professed to worship? She would not have been more astonished had a pauper knelt beside her on the velvet-clad steps from which she monthly communed, in the most fashionable church of the city.
Thus astounded and overwhelmed, the woman stood, till the quick footsteps of her niece were lost upon the stairs; then, with a deep breath, she sat down to compose herself, and even had recourse to an enamelled vinagrette that lay upon the toilet-table, so much had her nerves been shaken. All this had the desired effect, and in a few moments the lady was arranging the golden acorns over her dark tresses, gathering them in clusters where the silver threads lay thickest, and stood longer than usual, regarding herself in the mirror with a sort of wonder that any one had dared to address such words to her.
Directly a waiting-woman entered in answer to a touch that she had given to the bell. “Rachel, there was a girl came here just now; did you see her? is she gone?”
“No, madam, she fainted in the front-hall—fell down like a dead creature before any one had time to show her out the other way.”
“And where is she now?”
“Lying there white as snow, and as cold as ice; the girls have been doing their best, but they cannot bring her to.”
One gentle impulse did arise in the woman’s bosom, as she heard this. She seized the flask that had just soothed her own nerves, and moved a step toward the door; but a cold after-thought drew her back. “The girl might speak, might proclaim her relationship before the household if she were brought to consciousness under that roof. Nay, so little did she seem to be ashamed of the past, the girl might proclaim her pauper condition before the assembled menials.” She laid down the flask and turned to the glass, a little paler than before, but with marvellous self-possession.