After the words were spoken she was already to wish that she had bitten her tongue out.
"Christ worked among them," replied he gravely, and then he added, with a look of grateful affection toward Mrs. Arnot, "Besides, your aunt has taught me by a happy experience that there are some possibilities of a change for the better in 'such people.'"
"Mr. Haldane," said Laura impetuously, and with a burning flush, "I sincerely beg your pardon. As you were speaking you seemed so like my aunt in refinement and character that you banished every other association from my mind."
His face lighted up with a strong expression of pleasure, and he said:
"I am glad that those words are so heartily uttered, and that there is no premeditation in them; for if in the faintest and furthest degree I can even resemble Mrs. Arnot, I shall feel that I am indeed making progress."
"I shall say what is in my mind without any constraint whatever," said Mrs. Arnot. "Years ago, Egbert, when once visiting you in prison, to which you had been sent very justly, I said in effect, that in rising above yourself and your circumstances, you would realize my ideal of knighthood. You cannot know with what deep pleasure I tell you to-night that you are realizing this ideal even beyond my hopes."
"Mrs. Arnot," replied Haldane, in a tone that trembled slightly, "I was justly sent to that prison, and to-night, no doubt, I should have been in some other prison-house of human justice—quite possibly," he added, in a low, shuddering tone, "in the prison-house of God's justice—if you had not come like an angel of mercy—if you had not borne with me, taught me, restrained me, helped me with a patience closely akin to Heaven's own. It is the hope and prayer of my life that I may some day prove how I appreciate all that you have done for me. But, see; the storm is over, as all storms will be in time. Good-night, and good-by," and he lifted her hand to his lips in a manner that was at once so full of homage and gratitude, and also the grace of natural and unstudied action, that there came a rush of tears into the lady's eyes.
Laura held out her hand and said: "Mr. Haldane, you cannot respect me more than you have taught me to respect you."
He shook his head at these words, involuntarily intimating that she did not know, and never could, but departed without trusting himself to reply.
The ladies sat quite a long time in silence. At length Laura remarked with a sigh: