But she gave a good many thoughts to Elizabeth’s possible troubles as she sat there alone. Before the “turn of the night” Elizabeth came down rested and refreshed, she said. Jacob came in and sat a while, but scarcely a word was spoken. He offered to stay, but it was not necessary, his sister said.
“No! When is Clifton coming back?” asked he.
“To-morrow, I hope,” said Elizabeth.
“He must not go away again.”
“No. Not for a time.”
Elizabeth’s rest and refreshment “did not seem to amount to much,” Betsey thought as she watched her sitting in the firelight after Jacob went away. Not many people had ever seen on Elizabeth’s face the look it wore now. She seemed to have forgotten that there was any one to see. Except that she raised her head now and then to listen for sounds in her father’s room, she sat perfectly motionless, “limp and hopeless,” Betsey said to herself, and after a little she said aloud:
“Cousin Lizzie, you are not going to be ‘swallowed up of overmuch sorrow,’ are you? That would be rebellion, and there is no deeper deep of misery to a Christian than that.”
Elizabeth looked up startled.
“I don’t think I rebel, but—”
“You have been expecting this for a good while. Your father is a very old man now, Lizzie.”