"Which I am not able to do, because I don't know how matters might have turned out. But if I were you, or if I might advise you, I would not trouble myself about such uncertainties."
Elizabeth, however, did trouble herself. She had the trouble on her mind, she said, and she must get it off somehow, if she could. And then she went on to make her humble confession of the way in which she had traduced her cousin, and the motives which actuated her.
"I thought it would be a good thing for you, Walter, to have done with Sarah for ever; and I didn't care, at that time, what became of her. It was very wicked, I know, and I have been properly punished for it in more ways than one. I did it without intending it, at the time; I mean, I didn't intend to do so much mischief; but if I had known how things would have turned out, I wouldn't have touched it with my little finger, even—I wouldn't. And now I want you to tell me that you forgive me, Walter," she added, laying her hand on his, and looking earnestly and imploringly into his face.
"If there is anything to forgive, I do forgive you with all my heart," said Walter; "and if it will be any comfort to you to believe that all has turned out for the best, I should like you to know it."
And then he went on to tell something of his domestic life in Australia, and of the blessing it had been to him to have a teacher and guide in the woman whom he had had the happiness to call his wife.
"And I am very glad to know that my cousin has so pleasant a home, and so worthy a man for a husband, and is so happy as I have seen her. You see, Elizabeth, if things had gone on in the way that was thought of at one time, the great likelihood is that, after a few years, Sarah and I should have got tired of one another; and, whether we had or not, I wasn't fit or able to teach her anything, or to help her on in anything good; and she, poor thing, wouldn't have known how to set about teaching me. And so we might have gone muddling on till now, nobody knows how. And I haven't a doubt that everything has turned out for the best, and if not in your way exactly, why, it was in a better way, if you would only look at it in that light."
There was a long silence after this, for Walter was wearied, and, closing his eyes, he sank into a deep slumber, as it seemed to his sister, who, after readjusting the shawl so as to more effectually protect his frail form from cold, quietly awaited his awakening.
Yet not idly. Elizabeth was one of those women whose hands are taught never to be idle, and who always contrive to have a pocket full (or two pockets full, for that matter) of material and implements for any unexpected half-hour of vacancy or leisure. On this occasion, therefore, she had recourse to this never-failing reserve fund of feminine industry. If she had been a man, and it had been in the present degenerate days of tobacco-smoking, she, or he rather, would probably have taken out a cigar-case or a tobacco-pouch, with their needful accompaniments: but being what and who she was, Elizabeth Wilson was soon busy at some kind of needlework.
And while thus engaged, her thoughts wandered back into the far-off time of which she had been speaking. And especially she remembered one occasion on which that self-same holly arbour had witnessed a scene which she never thought of now without deep remorse.
She had not often since then revisited that arbour, and now the whole scene was reacted in her imagination. There sat John Tincroft, almost in the identical place now occupied by her brother; and here, where she herself was resting, had been seated her cousin Sarah, busy with her needle, when she broke in upon the two, so cruelly afterwards to traduce them!