He was gone; and Robert with a deep sigh said, ‘I am not judging. I trust there were tokens of repentance and forgiveness; but it is painful, as her mother feels it, to hear how her mind runs on light songs and poetry.’
‘Mechanically!’
‘True; and delirium is no criterion of the state of mind. But it is very mournful. In her occupation, one would have thought habit alone would have made her ear catch other chimes.’
Lucilla remembered with a pang that she had sympathized with Edna’s weariness of the monotony of hymn and catechism. Thinking poetry rather dull and tiresome, she had little guessed at the effect of sentimental songs and volumes of L. E. L. and the like, on an inflammable mind, when once taught to slake her thirsty imagination beyond the S.P.C.K. She did not marvel at the set look of pain with which Robert heard passionate verses of Shelley and Byron fall from those dying lips. They must have been conned by heart, and have been the favourite study, or they could hardly thus recur.
‘I must go,’ said Robert, after a time; ‘I am doing no good here. You will take care of your brother, if it is over before I return. Where are you?’
‘My things are in Woolstone-lane.’
‘I meant to get him there. I will come back by seven o’clock; but I must go to the school.’
‘May I go in there?’
‘You had better not. It is a fearful sight, and you cannot be of use. I wish you could be out of hearing; but the house is full.’
‘One moment, Robert—the child?’