'Early? After breakfast, you know. I suppose you will not come yourself.'
'Not here, I think. I have done all the good that I can do, and it is pleasant to no one. But you shall pick me up in the town. I shall go in and see your brother Robert.' Then he went, and Hester was left with her parents.
As she turned back from the hall-door she found her mother standing at the foot of the stairs, waiting for her. 'Shall I come with you, mamma?' she said. Holding each other's arms they went up, and so passed into Hester's room, where the nurse was sitting with the boy. 'Let her go into my room,' said the elder lady. So the nurse took the baby away, and they were alone together. 'Oh, Hester, Hester, my child!' said the mother, flinging her arms wildly round her daughter.
The whole tenor of her face was changed at that moment. Even to Hester she had been stern, forbidding, and sullen. There had not been a gracious movement about her lips or eyes since the visitors had come. A stranger, could a stranger have seen it all, would have said that the mother did not love her child, that there was no touch of tenderness about the woman's heart. But now, when she was alone, with the one thing on earth that was dear to her, she melted at once. In a moment Hester found herself seated on the sofa, with her mother kneeling before her, sobbing, and burying her face in the loved one's lap. 'You love me, Hester,—still.'
'Love you, mamma! You know I love you.'
'Not as it used to be. I am nothing to you now. I can do nothing for you now. You turn away from me, because—because—because—'
'I have never turned away from you, mamma.'
'Because I could not bear that you should be taken away from me and given to him.'
'He is good, mamma. If you would only believe that he is good!'
'He is not good. God only is good, my child.'