“I’m thinking a good deal of going away. You and Miss Wilcox can put somebody else here, and keep open the house. It doesn’t need me. My heart isn’t in it any more.”
The girl forced herself through these words with a mournful effort. The hot tears came to her eyes before she had finished, and she turned away abruptly, walking behind the counter to the front of the shop.
Miss Minster rose and went to her. “There is something you are not telling me, my child,” she urged with tender earnestness. “What is it? Are you in trouble? Tell me. Let me help you!”
“There is nothing—nothing at all,” Jessica made answer. “Only I am not happy here. It was a mistake to come. And there are—other things—that were a mistake, too.”
“Why not confide in me, dear? Why not let me help you?”
“How could you help me?” The girl spoke with momentary impatience. “There are things that money can’t help.”
The rich young lady drew herself up instinctively, and tightened the fur about her neck. The words affected her almost like an affront.
“I’m very sorry,” she said, with an obvious cooling of manner. “I did not mean money alone. I had hoped you felt I was your friend. And I still want to be, if occasion arises. I shall be very much grieved, indeed, if you do not let me know, at any and all times, when I can be of use to you.”
She held out her hand, evidently as an indication that she was going. Jessica saw the hand through a mist of smarting tears, and took it, not daring to look up. She was filled with longings to kiss this hand, to cry out for forgiveness, to cast herself upon the soft shelter of this sweet friendship, so sweetly proffered. But there was some strange spell which held her back, and, still through the aching film of tears, she saw the gloved hand withdrawn. A soft “good-by” spread its pathos upon the silence about her, and then Miss Minster was gone.
Jessica stood for a time, looking blankly into the street. Then she turned and walked with unconscious directness, as in a dream, through the back rooms and across the yard to the Resting House. She had passed her stepmother, her sister, and her child without bestowing a glance upon them, and she wandered now through the silent building aimlessly, without power to think of what she saw. Although the furniture was still of the most primitive and unpretentious sort, there were many little appliances for the comfort of the girls, in which she had had much innocent delight. The bath-rooms on the upper floor, the willow rocking-chairs in the sitting-room, the neat row of cups and saucers in the glassfaced cupboard, the magazines and pattern books on the table—all these it had given her pleasure to contemplate only a fortnight ago. Now they were nothing to her. She noted that the fire in the base-burner had gone out, though the reservoir still seemed full of coal. She was conscious of a vague sense of fitness in its having gone out. The fire that had burned within her heart was in ashes, too. She put her apron to her eyes and wept vehemently, here in solitude.