In quitting the dining-room—where Agatha, irresistibly led on by Mrs. Dugdale's pleasantness, had begun to feel quite at home, and had laughed till she was fairly tired out—he said, in a half whisper:
“Now, dear, I think we ought to go and see Elizabeth.”
In the confusion of her arrival, Agatha had forgotten that there was another sister—in truth, the Miss Harper of the family—Mary, its head and housekeeper, being properly only “Miss Mary.” She noticed that as Nathanael spoke, the other three looked at him and herself doubtfully, as if to inquire how much she knew—and anxiously, as though there were something painful and uncomfortable in a stranger's first seeing Elizabeth.
Mrs. Harper felt her cheeks tingle nervously, but still she put her arm in her husband's, and said, “I should much like to go.”
Mary sent for lights, and prepared to accompany them herself, the other two moving away into the drawing-room.
Through the same sort of old-fashioned passages, but, as it seemed, to quite a different part of the house, Agatha went with her husband and his sister. The strangeness and gloom of the place, the doubt as to what sort of person she was going to see—for all she had heard was that from some great physical suffering Elizabeth never quitted her room—made the young girl feel timid, even afraid. Her hand trembled so that her husband perceived it.
“Nay, you need not mind,” he whispered. “You will see nothing to pain you. We all dearly love her, and I do believe she is very happy—poor Elizabeth!”
As he spoke Mary opened a door, and they passed from the dark staircase into a large, well-lighted, pleasant room—made scrupulously pleasant, Agatha thought. It was filled with all sorts of pretty things, engravings, statuettes, vases, flowers, books, a piano; even the paper on the walls and the hangings at the window were of most delicate and careful choice. No rich drawing-room could show more taste in its arrangements, or have a more soothing effect on a mind to which the sense of æsthetic fitness is its native element.
At first, Agatha thought the room was empty, until, lying on a sofa—though so muffled in draperies as nearly to disguise all form—she saw what seemed at first the figure of a child. But coming nearer, the face was no child's face. It was that of a woman, already arrived at middle age. Many wrinkles seamed it; and the hair surrounding it in soft, close bands, was quite grey. The only thing notable about the countenance was a remarkable serenity, which in youth might have conveyed that painful impression of premature age often seen in similar cases, but which now in age made it look young. It was as if time and worldly sorrow had alike forgotten this sad victim of Nature's unkindness—had passed by and left her to keep something of the child's paradise about her still.
This face, and the small, thin, infantile-looking hands, crossed on the silk coverlet, were all that was visible. Agatha wondered she had so shrunk from the simple mystery now revealed.