For she dared not think. She shrank from mentally arguing out those two questions of duty—to society and to her father.
Was she to speak and tell all she knew?
Was she to be silent?
All she could do was to shrink within herself, and try to make everything pass out of her thoughts while she was sinking into the icy chains of idiocy.
But now, when she had been giving up completely, and at times gazing out to sea with horrible thoughts assailing her, and suggestions like temptations to seek for oblivion as the only escape from the agony she suffered, the life-raft had reached her hands, and she clung to it with all the tenacity of one mentally drowning fast.
There was something soothing in the very sound of her brother’s rough voice speaking in a hoarse whisper; and his selfish repinings over the petty discomforts he had suffered came like words of comfort and rest.
“It has been so jolly blank and miserable downstairs,” he went on as he held her, and involuntarily rocked himself to and fro. “Ike and Eliza have been always gossiping at the back and sneaking out to take dinner or tea or supper with somebody’s servants, so as to palaver about what’s gone on here.”
A pause.
“There’s been scarcely anything to eat. I’ve been half-starved.”
“Oh, Morton, my poor boy!”