"But now, now Henrietta! Oh! tell me that you do not still doubt all things—doubt even the being of the eternal power that made you; tell me, I beseech you, that you have read and thought on these things since that dreadful day that I overheard you make the confession to Mr. Hetherington which has rung in my ears ever since."
"Yes, Rosalind, I have read, and I have thought—but not now only, my kind friend. My short life, Rosalind, has been but one series of perturbed thinking—my brain has been racked by it. But I have gained nothing."
"I have no power, Henrietta, no learning, no strength of reason to remove the doubts that so fearfully darken these your last hours. Yet what would I not give that you could taste the ineffable comfort of perfect hope and perfect faith!"
"Perfect faith!" repeated Henrietta impatiently—"why do you have recourse to the slang I hate? Teach me to hope—oh! that you could! but let me not hear the hateful words, the false use of which has been my destruction."
"Henrietta! dearest Henrietta! will you consent to see a clergyman who can speak to you with the authority of age and wisdom?"
"A clergyman?" she replied, scoffingly. "Perhaps you will propose that I should see the Reverend Mr. Cartwright?"
"No, no. You do not think that it is such as him I would wish to send to you."
"Yet he is my father, Miss Torrington. And there it is, you see—there lies the difficulty. Name a clergyman, and Mr. Cartwright seems to rise before me. And shall I use my dying breath to say that I would hear with reverence what such as he could say? Leave me in peace, Rosalind. Let me sleep, I tell you. If there be a God, he will pity me!"
There was so much feverish excitement in her manner of speaking, that Rosalind, terrified lest she might hasten the hour she so earnestly wished to retard, in the hope that light might break upon that darkness which it was so terrible to witness, forbore to answer her, and tenderly arranging her pillows under her head, kissed her pale cheek and set herself down behind the curtain, in the place that she now almost constantly occupied.
After a moment, however, Henrietta spoke again, but it was gently and calmly. "Leave me, my most kind Rosalind," said she! "leave me for an hour or two: you must want the fresh air, and I want perfect solitude. Rosalind, I will think. Let no one come to me till I ring my bell. Go, my dear friend!"