“Rosa, you are taking me quite out of my depth. The looks of servant girls! Why, of course a lady in your condition is an object of especial interest to them. I dare say they are saying to one another, 'I wonder when my turn will come!' A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind—that is a proverb, is it not?”
“To be sure. I forgot that.”
She said no more; but seemed thoughtful, and not quite satisfied.
On this Dr. Philip begged the maids to go near her as little as possible. “You are not aware of it,” said he, “but your looks, and your manner of speaking, rouse her attention, and she is quicker than I thought she was, and observes very subtly.”
This was done; and then she complained that nobody came near her. She insisted on coming down-stairs; it was so dull.
Dr. Philip consented, if she would be content to receive no visits for a week.
She assented to that; and now passed some hours every day in the drawing-room. In her morning wrappers, so fresh and crisp, she looked lovely, and increased in health and strength every day.
Dr. Philip used to look at her, and his very flesh would creep at the thought that, ere long, he must hurl this fair creature into the dust of affliction; must, with a word, take the ruby from her lips, the rose from her cheeks, the sparkle from her glorious eyes—eyes that beamed on him with sweet affection, and a mouth that never opened, but to show some simplicity of mind, or some pretty burst of the sensitive heart.
He put off, and put off, and at last cowardice began to whisper, “Why tell her the whole truth at all? Why not take her through stages of doubt, alarm, and, after all, leave a grain of hope till her child gets so rooted in her heart that”—But conscience and good sense interrupted this temporary thought, and made him see to what a horrible life of suspense he should condemn a human creature, and live a perpetual lie, and be always at the edge of some pitfall or other.
One day, while he sat looking at her, with all these thoughts, and many more, coursing through his mind, she looked up at him, and surprised him. “Ah!” said she gravely.