“Why?” she stammered. “Is there any particular reason for my doing so? Have you not perceived the impossibility of my remaining in the same house with Eleanore?”
“Miss Leavenworth, I cannot recognize any so-called impossibility of this nature. Eleanore is your cousin; has been brought up to regard you as a sister; it is not worthy of you to desert her at the time of her necessity. You will see this as I do, if you will allow yourself a moment’s dispassionate thought.”
“Dispassionate thought is hardly possible under the circumstances,” she returned, with a smile of bitter irony.
But before I could reply to this, she softened, and asked if I was very anxious to have her return; and when I replied, “More than I can say,” she trembled and looked for a moment as if she were half inclined to yield; but suddenly broke into tears, crying it was impossible, and that I was cruel to ask it.
I drew back, baffled and sore. “Pardon me,” said I, “I have indeed transgressed the bounds allotted to me. I will not do so again; you have doubtless many friends; let some of them advise you.”
She turned upon me all fire. “The friends you speak of are flatterers. You alone have the courage to command me to do what is right.”
“Excuse me, I do not command; I only entreat.”
She made no reply, but began pacing the room, her eyes fixed, her hands working convulsively. “You little know what you ask,” said she. “I feel as though the very atmosphere of that house would destroy me; but—why cannot Eleanore come here?” she impulsively inquired. “I know Mrs. Gilbert will be quite willing, and I could keep my room, and we need not meet.”
“You forget that there is another call at home, besides the one I have already mentioned. To-morrow afternoon your uncle is to be buried.”
“O yes; poor, poor uncle!”