“Don’t you think I am patient? Don’t you think I am very patient?” she asked Caroline, winningly, on their way home.
Caroline could scarcely forbear from smiling at the feverish anxiety she showed for a reply that should confirm her words and hopes.
“So we must all be!” she said, and that common-place remark caused Juliana to exclaim: “Prisoners have lived in a dungeon, on bread and water, for years!”
Whereat Caroline kissed her so tenderly that Juliana tried to look surprised, and failing, her thin lips quivered; she breathed a soft “hush,” and fell on Caroline’s bosom.
She was transparent enough in one thing; but the flame which burned within her did not light her through.
Others, on other matters, were quite as transparent to her.
Caroline never knew that she had as much as told her the moral suicide Evan had committed at Beckley; so cunningly had she been probed at intervals with little casual questions; random interjections, that one who loved him could not fail to meet; petty doubts requiring elucidations. And the Countess, kind as her sentiments had grown toward the afflicted creature, was compelled to proclaim her densely stupid in material affairs. For the Countess had an itch of the simplest feminine curiosity to know whether the dear child had any notion of accomplishing a certain holy duty of the perishable on this earth, who might possess worldly goods; and no hints—not even plain speaking, would do. Juliana did not understand her at all.
The Countess exhibited a mourning-ring on her finger, Mrs. Bonner’s bequest to her.
“How fervent is my gratitude to my excellent departed friend for this! A legacy, however trifling, embalms our dear lost ones in the memory!”
It was of no avail. Juliana continued densely stupid. Was she not worse? The Countess could not, “in decency,” as she observed, reveal to her who had prompted Mrs. Bonner so to bequeath the Beckley estates as to “ensure sweet Juliana’s future”; but ought not Juliana to divine it?—Juliana at least had hints sufficient.