Aunt Kate was not quick (it was one of the explanations of the preservation of her beauty). "No, you're not; but I wish you were," she responded.
Mr. Moore knew nothing of the increase of his income; it was Penelope who had been won over by Winthrop's earnest logic—earnest in regard to the comfort of the poor sufferer lying blinded, voiceless, helpless, in the next room. What Winthrop was urging was simply that money should not be considered in providing for him every possible alleviation and luxury. His illness might be a long one (at that stage—it was while Mr. Moore was still in the river hotel—no one spoke of death, though all knew that it was very near); everything, therefore, should be done to lighten it. If the rectory was gloomy, another house in Gracias should be taken—one with a large garden; two good nurses should be sent for immediately; and, later, there must be a horse, and some sort of a low, easy vehicle, made on purpose to carry a person in a recumbent posture. Many other things would be required, these he mentioned now were but a beginning; Mrs. Moore must see that neither his aunt, Mrs. Harold, nor himself could take a moment's rest until everything was done that could be done, they should all feel extremely unhappy, miserable—if she should refuse them. If she would but stop to think of it, she must realize that.
Penelope agreed to this.
She had cried so much that she was the picture of living despair, she was thinking of nothing but her husband and his pain; but she forced a momentary attention towards Winthrop, who was talking so earnestly to her, trying to make some impression.
He could see that he did not make much.
"Your husband gave his life—it amounted to that—to save Margaret's; she was nothing to him—that is, no relative, not even a near friend, yet he faced for her the most horrible of deaths. If it had not been for him, that would have been her death, and think, then, Mrs. Moore, think what we should be feeling now." He had meant to say this steadily, but he could not. His voice became choked, he got up quickly and went to the window.
Penelope, who, tired as she was, and with one hand pressed constantly against her weak back, was yet sitting on the edge of a hard wooden chair, ready to jump up and run into the next room at an instant's notice, tried again to detach her mind from her husband long enough to think of what it was this man was saying to her; she liked Margaret, and therefore she succeeded sufficiently well to answer, "It would have been terrible." Then her thoughts went back to Middleton again.
"Don't you see, then," said Winthrop, returning, "that, standing as we do almost beside her grave, your husband has become the most precious person in the world to us? How can you hesitate?" he said, breaking off, "how can you deny us the pleasure of doing everything possible—so little at best—to help him in his great suffering?"
"Oh yes—his suffering! his suffering!" moaned the wife, the tears dropping down her white cheeks without any distortion of feature. Her eyes looked large; singularly enough, though she was so exhausted, her countenance appeared younger than he had ever seen it; under the all-absorbing influence of her grief its usual expressions had gone and one could trace again the outlines of youth; her girlhood face—almost her little-girl face—had come strangely back, as it does sometimes after death, when grandchildren see, with startled, loving surprise, what "grandma" was when she too was only sixteen.
Winthrop took her thin worn hand and carried it to his lips; her sorrow was very sacred to him. "For you too," he urged—"you who are so tired and ill—let us help you all we can. Do not refuse us, Mrs. Moore; do not."