But when left alone her manner changed. She sank down by the window—looking out, looking out. The other day in her supreme appeal she would have abandoned everything to Gerard on his coming home; she had hoped against hope. And what had been his reply? “I am glad you have it, if you like it. I would not have exchanged my struggle for yours.” The words came to her now with superficial meaning; long afterwards she learned to fathom their sorrowful compassion.
“It is God’s doing,” she pleaded, still gazing away upon the landscape, “God’s answer. He confided these hundreds of human beings to my care, and now gives me the means to help them. I dare not abandon them to Gerard—to ruin. Right is an abstract idea. It were wrong to do right.”
The next two days brought Ursula a strange medley of emotions. Gerard had telegraphed immediately after the riot, offering his services; but she begged him not to come over just yet. She dreaded all contact with him. She dreaded his pale face.
He, on his part, gladly held aloof. He was looking for a small house at the Hague, where he expected his mother to come and live with him. The Dowager meanwhile waited patiently. Gerard had only been back a fortnight. To her it seemed one brief yesterday.
Meanwhile the news of Ursula’s accession to wealth filled the province. In one moment the tide turned completely, and the waters of adulation came running from all sides to her feet. Tenants and tradespeople vied with each other in denouncing those who had wronged her. Demands for improvements and repairs poured in hourly; petitioners of all kinds jostled accredited beggars on the Manor-house steps. A rumor had gone forth that the young Baroness really intended to spend her wealth on the property, and when early requests received a hearing, and vague projects got bruited, then enthusiasm knew no bounds. Not more than a week after the attack on the Manor-house Ursula was compelled to exert herself, amid a storm of delation, to prevent both a criminal trial and a lynching of scape-goats by lesser offenders. She would have extended small mercy to the poisoner of her dog had not a story recently reached her ears, after going the round of the neighborhood, to the effect that the notary’s new clerk had been found one evening, not far from his home, lying in the road unconscious, with the coat thrashed off his back.
Ursula, a little dazed amid this sudden revulsion, could even smile at the faces that beamed upon her and serenely decline the honors of a swift counter-demonstration after the manner of Gerard’s reception. She could make every excuse for the fawning of those whose daily bread lies in a master’s hand, but what hurt her to the quick was the sudden melting of the “cousins,” who poured down upon her like icicles suddenly struck by the beams of a belated sun. They could not understand her shivering in the bath of their congratulatory condolence. Ursula pushed the Barons and Baronesses aside.
But the rush of popularity was pleasing, even when correctly estimated; the importance was pleasing; and the possibility of fulfilment—the sudden nearness of life-long ideals—was most pleasing of all. It was all so sudden, so unexpected. Ursula, triumphant, gasped for breath.