‘No!’ faintly said Emma.
‘And now, when your mother has saved you, and her heart is aching to comfort you, and take you back to the safe old nest where all your duties and schemes lie, Miss Marstone tries to keep you from her; and fancies she is doing the best and most conscientious thing by teaching you to elude her, and go where, to one in your state of mind, is temptation indeed. Oh! Emma, she may think it right; but are you acting kindly by the mother who has only you?’
Theodora was very glad to see tears. ‘I cannot bear to go home!’ presently said Emma.
‘Have you thought how badly all the poor people must be getting on without you? All your children—it is half a year since you saw them!’
Emma groaned.
‘Yes, it is bad enough at first. You have had a heavy trial indeed, poor Emma; but what is a trial but something to try us? Would it not be more manful to face the pain of going home, and to take up your allotted work? Then you would be submitting, not to a self-made rule, but to Heaven’s own appointment.’
Was Emma’s mind disengaged enough for curiosity, or did she want to quit the subject! She said—‘You have had a trial of this kind yourself?’
Theodora had a struggle. To tell the whole seemed to her as uncalled for as painful; and yet there must be reciprocity if there is to be confidence, and she could not bear to advise like one who had never erred. She therefore confessed how her happiness had been wrecked by her own fault, and related the subsequent misery; how Violet had repelled the disposition to exalt her rather than her parents, and had well-nigh forced her abroad, and how there in the dreary waste a well of peace had sprung up, and had been with her ever since.
Short as Theodora tried to make the story she so much disliked, it lasted till they were almost at home. It had its effect. To be thrown over upon Lady Martindale and Mrs. Nesbit at Baden could not but appear to Emma a worse lot than to be left to her own mother and Rickworth, which, after all, she loved so well; and the promise of peace to be won by following appointed paths was a refreshing sound.
She had, this whole time, never thought of her mother’s feelings, and the real affection she entertained was once more awake. Besides, to see how Theodora represented their scheme, not only shook her faith in Theresa, but alarmed her sense of right on her own account. In short, though she said no word, there was a warmth in her meeting with Lady Elizabeth, on their return, that gave Theodora hopes.