"This is very sudden and unexpected, Mordaunt," Dus remarked, after she had had a little time to recover her recollection; "and I have so much reason to fear the judgment of your respectable parents—of your charming sister, of whom I have heard so often through Priscilla Bayard—and indeed of all who have lived, as they have done, amid the elegancies of a refined state of society; I, Dus Malbone—a chainbearer's niece, and a chainbearer myself!"
"You have never borne any chain, love, that is as lasting or as strong as that which you have entwined around my heart, and which will forever bind me to you, let the rest of the world regard us both as it may. But you can have nothing to fear from any, and least of all from my friends. My father is not worldly-minded; and as for my dear, dear mother, Anneke Mordaunt, as the general even now often affectionately calls her, as if the name itself reminded him of the days of her maiden loveliness and pride—as for that beloved mother, Ursula, I do firmly believe that, when she comes to know you, she will even prefer you to her son."
"That is a picture of your blinded partiality, Mordaunt," answered the gratified girl, for gratified I could see she was, "and must not be too fondly relied on. But this is no time to talk of our own future happiness, when the eternal happiness or misery of those two aged men is suspended, as it might be, by a thread. I have read prayers once already with my dear uncle; and that strange woman, in whom there is so much of her sex, mingled with a species of ferocity like that of a she-bear, has muttered a hope that her own 'dying man,' as she calls him, is not to be forgotten. I have promised he should not be, and it is time to attend to that duty next."
What a scene followed! Dus placed the light on a chest near the bed of Thousandacres, and, with the prayer-book in her hand, she knelt beside it. Prudence stationed herself in such a posture that her head was buried in one of her own garments, that was suspended from a peg; and there she stood, while the melodious voice of Ursula Malbone poured out the petitions contained in the offices for the dying, in humble but fervent piety. I say stood, for neither Prudence nor Lowiny knelt. The captious temper of self-righteousness which had led their ancestors to reject kneeling at prayers as the act of formalists, had descended to them; and there they stood, praying doubtless in their hearts, but ungracious formalists themselves in their zeal against forms. Frank and I knelt in the doorway; and I can truly affirm that never did prayers sound so sweetly in my ears, as those which then issued from the lips of Ursula Malbone.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
"Thence cum we to the horrour and the hel,
The large great kyngdomes, and the dreadful raygne
Of Pluto in his trone where he dyd dwell,
The wyde waste places, and the hugye playne:
The waylings, shrykes, and sundry sortes of payne.
The syghes, and sobbes, and diep and deadly groane,
Earth, ayer, and all resounding playnt and moane."
—Sackville.