One day, having been reading a little to her, he sat looking at her. He did not know how sad was the expression of his countenance. She looked up, smiled, and said,
“You think I am unhappy!—you could not look at me like that if you did not think so! I am only tired; I am not unhappy. I hardly know now what unhappiness is! If ever I look as if I were unhappy, it is only that I am waiting for more life. It is on the way; I feel it is, because I am so content with everything; I would have nothing other than it is. It is very hard for God that his children will not trust him to do with them what he pleases! I am sure, Mr. Grant, the world is all wrong, and on the way to be all wondrously right. It will cost God much labour yet: we will cost him as little as we can—won’t we?—Oh, Mr. Grant, if it hadn’t been for you, God would have been far away still! For a God, I should have had something half an idol, half a commonplace tyrant! I should never have dreamed of the glory of God!”
“No, my lady!” returned Donal; “if God had not sent me, he would have sent somebody else; you were ready!”
“I am very glad he sent you! I should never have loved any other so much!”
Donal’s eyes filled with tears. He was simple as a child. No male vanity, no self-exultation that a woman should love him, and tell him she loved him, sprang up in his heart. He knew she loved him; he loved her; all was so natural it could not be otherwise: he never presumed to imagine her once thinking of him as he had thought of Ginevra. He was her servant, willing and loving as any angel of God: that was all—and enough!
“You are not vexed with your pupil—are you?” she resumed, again looking up in his face, this time with a rosy flush on her own.
“Why?” said Donal, with wonder.
“For speaking so to my master.”
“Angry because you love me?”
“No, of course!” she responded, at once satisfied. “You knew that must be! How could I but love you—better than any one else in the world! You have given me life! I was dead.—You have been like another father to me!” she added, with a smile of heavenly tenderness. “But I could not have spoken to you like this, if I had not known I was dying.”