Mabin overcame the faintness which had seized her, and quite suddenly raised her head again. The little excitement of the hope held out to her brought all her senses back.
“Come and see you! Oh, may I? I should like to so much!”
The girl almost nestled, as she spoke, against her new friend.
But over Mrs. Dale’s fair, childlike face there came at once a sort of shadow, as if a terrible remembrance had suddenly taken the power for all pleasurable emotion from her. It almost seemed to Mabin that the little hands made a movement as if to push her away.
And then there burst forth from the infantile red lips some words which struck terror into her young hearer, so bitter, so full of sadness, of biting remorse, were they:
“No, child, no. You must not come. I am too wicked!”
The girl was struck dumb. She wanted to comfort pretty Mrs. Dale; she wanted to laugh at her self-accusation, to express incredulity, amusement. But in the face of that look of anguish, of that inexpressibly mournful cry straight from the heart, she could not even open her lips. She knew that there was some grief here which no words of comfort could touch.
So deeply absorbed was she in the silent compassion which kept her with lowered eyelids and mute lips, that she was quite startled when Mrs. Dale’s voice, speaking in her ordinary tones, struck again upon her ear.
“That young fellow who picked you up is one of the Vicar’s sons, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” answered Mabin in a rather colder voice.