"You didn't expect me to tell her the truth, did you? What kind of brute do you take me for?"
This new morality, for which neither religious doctrine nor experimental philosophy had prepared her, stunned her into silence; and in that silence he repeated, with a gesture of irritation, as if the admission annoyed him excessively: "She'll be in her grave in six months, but you couldn't expect me to tell her so."
"You mean there is no hope?"
"Not of a cure. Her lungs are too far gone. Of course, if she gets out of doors, she may linger a little longer than we expect. Air and proper nourishment work wonders sometimes."
"But don't you think she ought to have time to prepare?" It was the question her mother would have asked, and she uttered it regretfully but firmly.
"Prepare? You mean for her funeral?"
"No, I mean for eternity."
If she had presented some prehistoric fossil for his inspection, he might have examined it with the same curious interest.
"For eternity?" he repeated.
Dorinda wavered. Though honest doubt was not unknown at Pedlar's Mill, it had seldom resisted successfully the onslaught of orthodox dogma. To the girl, with her intelligence and independence, many of her mother's convictions had become merely habits of speech; yet, after all, was not habit rather than belief the ruling principle of conduct?