"Yes, it was. I'd no business going away to other people after I had told him he might come here. You, who had always been so good too!"
"You mustn't say again that you wish he hadn't come here."
"Oh! but I do wish it, because then he would have been nothing to you. I do wish he hadn't ever come, but now I'd do anything to bring him back again. I believe I'll go to him and tell him that it was my doing."
"No, mamma, you won't do that."
"Why should I not? I don't care what people say. Isn't your happiness everything to me?"
"But I shouldn't take him if he came in that way. What! beg him to come and have compassion on me, as if I couldn't live without him! No, mother; that wouldn't do. I do love him. I do love him. I sometimes think I cannot live without his love. I sometimes feel as though stories about broken hearts might be true. But I wouldn't have him in that way. How could he love me afterwards, when I was his wife? But, mamma, we'll be friends again;—shall we not? I've been so unhappy that you should have thought ill of him!"
That night the mother and daughter shared the same bed together, and Mrs. Ray was able to sleep. She would not confess to herself that her sorrow had been lightened, because nothing had been said or done to lessen that of her daughter; but on the morrow Rachel came and hovered round her again, and the bitterness of Mrs. Ray's grief was removed.