‘I wonder,’ thought Winifred, ‘whether he married to get rid of her. I should have thought it justifiable had it been any one but Albinia!’
The call on Mrs. Dusautoy was consoling. It was delightful to find how Albinia was loved and valued at the vicarage. Mrs. Dusautoy began by sending her as a message, John’s first exclamation on hearing of the event. ‘Then she will never be of any more use.’ In fact, she said, it was much to him like having a curate disabled, and she believed he could only be consoled by the hopes of a pattern christening, and of a nursery for his school-girls; but there Winifred shook her head, Fairmead had a prior claim, and Albinia had long had her eye upon a scholar of her own.
‘I told John that she would! and he must bear it as he can,’ laughed Mrs. Dusautoy; and she went on more seriously to say that her gratitude was beyond expression, not merely for the actual help, though that was much, but for the sympathy, the first encouragement they had met among their richer parishioners, and she spoke of the refreshment of the mirthfulness and playful manner, so as to convince Winifred that they had neither died away nor been everywhere wasted.
Winifred had no amenable patient. Weak and depressed as Albinia was, her restlessness and air of anxiety could not be appeased. There was a look of being constantly on the watch, and once, when her door was ajar, before Winifred was aware she exerted her voice to call Gilbert!
Pushing the door just wide enough to enter, and treading almost noiselessly, he came forward, looking from side to side as with a sense of guilt. She stretched out her hand and smiled, and he obeyed the movement that asked him to bend and kiss her, but still durst not speak.
‘Let me have the baby,’ she said.
Mrs. Ferrars laid it beside her, and held aloof. Gilbert’s eyes were fixed intently on it.
‘Yes, Gilbert,’ Albinia said, ‘I know what you will feel for him. He can’t be what you once had—but oh, Gilbert, you will do all that an elder brother can to make him like Edmund!’
Gilbert wrung her fingers, and ventured to stoop down to kiss the little red forehead. The tears were running down his cheeks, and he could not speak.
‘If your father might only say the same of him! that he never grieved him!’ said Albinia; ‘but oh, Gilbert—example,’ and then, pausing and gazing searchingly in his face, ‘You have not told papa.’