‘I should hope that God would help me to feel right,’ said Mary.
‘I am very much afraid He will not, ma chère’ said Madame. ‘I asked Him a great many times to help me when I found how wrong it all was, and He did not. You remember what you told me the other day, “that if I would do right I must not see that man any more.” You will have to ask him to go away from this place. You can never see him, for this love will never die till you die! That you may be sure of. Is it wise? Is it right, dear little one? Must he leave his home for ever for you? Or must you struggle always, and grow whiter and whiter and whiter, and fade away into heaven like the moon this morning, and nobody know what is the matter? People will say you have the liver-complaint, or the consumption, or something. Nobody ever knows what we women die of.’
Poor Mary’s conscience was fairly posed. This appeal struck upon her sense of right, as having its grounds. She felt inexpressibly confused and distressed.
‘Oh, I wish somebody would tell me exactly what is right!’ she said.
‘Well, I will!’ said Madame de Frontignac. ‘Go down to the dear priest and tell him the whole truth. My dear child, do you think if he should ever find it out after your marriage, he would think you used him right?’
‘And yet mother does not think so! Mother does not wish me to tell him!’
‘Pauvrette! Always the mother! Yes, it is always the mothers that stand in the way of the lovers. Why cannot she marry the priest herself?’ she said, between her teeth, and then looked up, startled and guilty, to see if Mary had heard her.
‘I cannot!’ said Mary. ‘I cannot go against my conscience, and my mother, and my best friend—’
At this moment the conference was cut short by Mrs. Scudder’s provident footstep on the garret stairs. A vague suspicion of something French had haunted her during her dairy-work, and she resolved to come and put a stop to the interview by telling Mary that Miss Prissy wanted her to come and be measured for the skirt of her dress.
Mrs. Scudder, by the use of that sixth sense peculiar to mothers, had divined that there had been some agitating conference, and had she been questioned about it, her guesses as to what it might be, would probably have given no bad résumé of the real state of the case. She was inwardly resolved that there should be no more such for the present, and kept Mary employed about various matters relating to the dresses so scrupulously, that there was no opportunity for anything more of the sort that day.