"But could you not have stayed here?" she asked.
"And be a burden upon you I that's what I have done too long, Miss Gray."
"But until you found employment elsewhere, you might have remained."
"His house is as good as any; his bread is not more bitter than another's," replied Jones, in a subdued voice, "besides, now that my Mary is gone, what need I care, Miss Gray?" And as he saw that her eyes were dim, he added: "You need not pity me, Miss Gray, the bitterness of my trouble is, and has long been over. My Mary is not dead for me. She is, and ever will be, living for her old father, until the day of meeting. And whilst I am waiting for that day, you do not think I care about what befalls me."
CHAPTER XXII.
Once more Rachel was alone. Once more solitude and the silence of the quiet street, shrouded her in.
A new life now began for Rachel Gray. Like a plant long bent by adverse winds, she slowly recovered elasticity of spirit, and lightness of heart. What she might have been, but for the gloom of her youth, Rachel never was; but as the dark cloud, which had long hung over her, rolled away, as she could move, speak, eat, and think unquestioned in her little home, a gleam of sunshine, pale but pure, shone over her life with that late-won liberty. Her speech became more free, her smile was more frequent, her whole manner more open and cheerful.
Rachel lived, however, both by taste and by long habit, in great retirement, and saw but few people. Indeed, almost her only visitors were Richard Jones and Madame Rose. The little Frenchwoman now and then dropped in, looked piteously at Thomas Gray, shrugged her shoulders, nodded, winked, and did everything to make herself understood, but talk English; and Rachel listened to her, and laughed gaily at the strange speech and strange ways of her little friend.
Richard Jones was a still more frequent visitor. He came to receive, not to give sympathy. The society of Rachel Gray was to him a want of his life, for to her alone he could talk of Mary; he spoke and she listened, and in listening gave the best and truest consolation. Now and then, not often, for Rachel felt and knew that such language frequently repeated wearies the ear of weak humanity, she ventured to soothe his grief with such ailments as she could think of. And her favorite one, one which she often applied to herself and her own troubles was: "We receive blessings from the hand of God, shall we not also take sorrow when it pleases Him to inflict it?"
"Very true. Miss Gray, very true," humbly assented Richard Jones.