“Pray, pray, do not speak to me about it, dear,” said Louise, piteously. “I cannot bear it. Father, I wish to be with you—to help and comfort, and to find help and comfort in your arms.”
“Yes,” he said, folding her to his breast; “and you are suffering and it is not the first time that our people have been called upon to suffer, my child. But your aunt—”
“Pray dearest, not now—not now,” whispered Louise, laying her brow against his cheek.
“I will say no more,” he said tenderly. “Yes, to be my help and comfort in all this trouble and distress. You are right, it is no time for thinking of such things as that.”
Chapter Forty One.
Aunt Marguerite Makes Plans.
“I could not—I could not. A wife should accept her husband, proud of him, proud of herself, the gift she gives him with her love; and I should have been his disgrace. Impossible! How could I have ever looked him bravely in the face? I should have felt that he must recall the past, and repented when it was too late.”
So mused Louise Vine as she sat trying to work that same evening after a wearisome meal, at which Aunt Marguerite had taken her place to rouse them from their despondent state. So she expressed it, and the result had been painful in the extreme.