Then Hester went on with her tale of trouble. Her brother Cornelius had been behaving very badly, she said, and had married a young woman without letting them know. Her father and mother were unaware of the fact as yet, and she dreaded having to communicate it to them. He had been very ill with the small-pox, and she must take him home; but what to do with his wife until she had broken the matter to them, she did not know. She knew her father would be very angry, and until he should have got over it a little she dared not have her home: in a word she was at her wits' end.
"One question, excuse me if I ask," said Miss Dasomma: "are they married?"
"I am not sure; but I am sure she believes they are."
Then she told her what she knew of Amy. Miss Dasomma fell a thinking.
"Could I see her?" she said at length.
"Surely; any time," replied Hester, "now that Corney is so much better."
Miss Dasomma called, and was so charmed with Amy that she proposed to Hester she should stay with her.
This was just what Hester wished but had not dared to propose.
Now came the painful necessity not only of breaking to the young wife that she must be parted from her husband for a while, but—which was much worse—of therein revealing that he had deceived her.
Had Cornelius not been ill and helpless, and characterless, he would probably have refused to go home; but he did not venture a word of opposition to Hester's determination. He knew she had not told Amy anything, but saw that, if he refused, she might judge it necessary to tell her all. And notwithstanding his idiotic pretence of superiority, he had a kind of thorough confidence in Hester. In his sickness something of the old childish feeling about her as a refuge from evil had returned upon him, and he was now nearly ready to do and allow whatever she pleased, trusting to her to get him out of the scrape he was in: she could do more than any one else, he was sure!