“Mary! My poor girl!”
He spoke with deep tenderness, and went towards her; then she put her arms round his neck and wept.
He reproached himself. Things might not, should not, have been so bad as this. In some way he might have helped her, if only by remaining near. Whilst he had dreamed at Wood End, this poor stricken soul had gone through the very valley of the shadow of death. He had not paid much heed to her letters; he had failed in sympathetic imagination; she had written so simply, so unemphatically. He reproached himself bitterly.
“How good of you, Bernard, to come to me!” she said, regarding him through her tears. “I do want some one to be near me; I feel so helpless. Death is so dreadful.”
She said it without stress of feeling, but the words were all the more powerful. Kingcote felt that they gave him a new understanding of pathos.
She would not speak more of the dead man, knowing how her brother had regarded him. At his bidding she sat on the sofa, and by degrees overcame her weakness; he comforted her.
“What shall I do, Bernard?” she asked, appealing to him with tearful eyes. “What is to become of the children? What is before us?”
“At first, rest,” was his kind answer. “Don’t let a thought of the future trouble you; that is my affair. You shall never want whilst I live, Mary.”
“Oh, it is hard to be a burden to you! I have burdened you for a long time. You have already done more for me than any brother could be asked to do. How can I let you?”
“We won’t talk of these things yet; time enough. All I want now is to be some comfort to you.”