"Miss Gray," he said, "I have worked from my youth—slaved some would say; I hoped to make out something for myself and my child, and it was more of her than of myself I thought I wronged none; I did my best; a rich man steps in, and I am bewared—and you tell me God is good—mind, I don't say he aint—but is he good to me?"
Rachel Gray shook with nervous emotion from head to foot She was pained— she was distressed at the question. Still more distressed because her mind was so bewildered, because her ideas were in such strange tumult, that with the most ardent wish to speak, she could not. As when in a dream we struggle to move and cannot, our will being fettered by the slumber of the body, so Rachel felt then, so alas! for her torment she felt almost always; conscious of truths sublime, beautiful and consoling, but unable to express them in speech.
"God is good," she said again, clinging to that truth as to her anchor of safety.
Again Richard Jones smiled.
"And my child, Miss Gray," he said, lowering his voice so that his words could not reach the next room, "going by inches before my very eyes; yet I must look on and not go mad. I must be beggared, and I must bear it; I must become childless, and I must bear it. And the wicked thrive, and the wicked's children outlive them, for God is good to them, Miss Gray."
The eyes of Rachel filled with tears; her brow became clouded.
"Ah! Mr. Jones," she said, "do not complain; you have loved your child."
"What are you keeping Miss Gray there for?" pettishly said the voice of
Mary, "I want her."
"And here I am, dear," said Rachel, going in to her, "I am come to sit a while with you; for I am sure your poor father wants rest, does he not?"
"I don't want any one to sit with me," impatiently replied Mary, "I am not so ill as all that."