The witness within her spoke more clearly, and dislike and loathing of her proceedings during the last year grew more strongly upon her. The sense of her faults had been latent in her mind for months past, but the struggle of her external life had kept it down, until now it came forth with an overpowering force of grief and self-condemnation. It was not merely her sins against Mr. Fotheringham and Lord St. Erme that oppressed her, it was the perception of the wilful and rebellious life she had led, while making so high a profession.
Silently and sadly she wore through the rest of the day, unmolested by any remark from the rest of the family, but absorbed in her own thoughts, and the night passed in acute mental distress; with longings after Violet to soothe her, and to open to her hopes of the good and right way of peace.
With morning light came the recollection that, after all, Violet would rejoice in what she had just done. Violet would call it a step in the right direction; and she had promised her further help from above and within, when once she should have had patience to take the right move, even in darkness. ‘She told me, if I put my trust aright, and tried to act in obedience, I should find a guide!’
And, worn out and wearied with the tossings of her mind, Theodora resolved to have recourse to the kind clergyman who had listened to her confidence. Perhaps he was the guide who would aid her to conquer the serpents that had worked her so much misery; and, after so much self-will, she felt that there would be rest in submitting to direction.
She sought him out, and joined his early walk.
‘Help me,’ she said; ‘I repent, indeed I do. Teach me to begin afresh, and to be what I ought. I would do anything.’
‘Anything that is not required of you, Theodora, or anything that is?’
‘Whatever you or Violet required of me,’ said she, ‘that I would do readily and gladly, cost me what it might.’
‘It is not for me to require anything,’ said Mr. Martindale. ‘What I advise you is to test the sincerity of your repentance by humbling yourself to ask your father’s forgiveness.’
He watched her face anxiously, for his hopes of her almost might be said to depend upon this. It was one of those efforts which she made with apparent calmness. ‘You and Violet ask the same thing,’ she said; ‘I will.’