“That selfish wretch—Miss Miskin!”
“It was very moving, I assure you, to hear not one word of reproach,—or even notice of Miss Miskin’s desertion in this illness. What was said was common-place enough; but every word was kind. I have it all. I took it down with my pencil, behind the curtain; for I was sure Miss Miskin would never remember it. Mrs Howell went on till she came to directions about the bullfinch that her poor dear Howell used to laugh to see perched upon her nightcap of a morning; and then she grew unintelligible. I thought she was only fainting; but while we were trying to revive her, Nanny said she was going. Miss Miskin drew back into the passage, shut the door, and made her escape. Her friend looked that way once more, and said that we had all been very good to her. She mentioned her husband, as I told you, and then died very quietly.”
“Miss Miskin knows, of course?”
“I told her, and did not pretend to feel much sympathy in her lamentations. I told her she had lost a friend who would have watched over her, I believed, till her last breath, if she had been the one attacked by the fever.”
“What did she say?”
“She exclaimed a great deal about how good we all were, and wondered what Deerbrook would have done without us; and said she was sure I was too kind to think of leaving her in the house with the corpse, with only Nanny. When I declined passing the night there, she comforted herself with thinking aloud that her friend would not haunt her—certainly would not haunt her—as she had gone to her room at last. Her final question was, how soon I thought it likely that she should feel the fever coming on, in case of her having caught it, after all, by going into the room.”
“What an end to a sentimental friendship of so many years!”
“I rather expect to hear in the morning that she has taken refuge in some neighbour’s house, and left Nanny alone with the corpse to-night.”
“My husband’s knock!” cried Hester, starting up. “How is your headache, love?” asked she anxiously, as she met him at the room door.
“Gone, quite gone,” he replied. “I must step down into the surgery for a minute, about this poor little girl’s medicine; and then I have a great deal to tell you.”