"I don't suppose she is. She is only keeping her hand in. Don't you remember how cruel she was to that poor Mr. Bell."
"I am convinced that she is not keeping her hand in."
"Then you actually favour the idea of a marriage." Bessie got up and stalked slowly to the door. "You will help it on?" she said over her shoulder.
"No." Magdalen's voice shook a little. "I will do nothing to help it, or to hinder it."
CHAPTER XXI
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The dawn broke dim on Rose Mary's soul— No hill-crown's heavenly aureole, But a wild gleam on a shaken shoal. |
—D. G. Rossetti.
If Fay's progress through life could have been drawn with a pencil it would have resembled the ups and downs, like the teeth of a saw, of a fever chart.
To Magdalen it appeared as if Fay could undergo the same feelings with the same impotent results of remorse or depression a hundred times. They seemed to find her the same and leave her the same. But nevertheless she did move, imperceptibly, unconsciously—no, not quite unconsciously. The sense—common to all weak natures—not of being guided, but of being pushed was upon her.