"Then, let us try to muddle on alone."
"No. I am sure he would wish me." She waited, head on hand as she sat at the table, looking down at, but not seeing the letter she had written for her mother to copy. "He is such a sad man, mama," she said presently. "He still grieves, and grieves, and grieves, for his wife."
"But he was kind to you, Deleah?"
"Yes. When he remembered. When he knew I was there. He loved her so much. Miss Forcus has been telling me how he loved her. She was so beautiful, so grand in manner and appearance, with such a fine character, so great and good. There is a lovely monument to her in Cashelthrope churchyard. I went to look at it this morning, after Miss Forcus had been speaking of her. A white marble angel with a heavenly face stands above the grave looking upwards, a lily in her hand. Do you know what I felt, mama. I felt I would die if I could give her back to him."
"Deleah!"
"I would," Deleah said, quite pale, and with a lip that trembled; "I would die gladly if that could bring her back to him, and make him happy again."
Mrs. Day looked at her daughter with a rather startled attention, and
Deleah, glancing up, and catching her mother's eye, smiled brightly.
"Come, now let us send off this letter," she said.
When it was ready she ran down with it, herself, to the red pillar-box, opposite the shop-door. "That matter is done with," she said as the letter disappeared within the box, and she turned to re-enter. The light from the street lamp fell on her mother's name, black letters on a white ground, above the shop door. "Lydia Day, licensed to sell tobacco and snuff." "And all that is nearly done with," she added, "and whatever happens I am not sorry."
She felt curiously strong and capable; competent to work her way, afraid of no difficulties. "It is more than time I should grow up, and at last, I have done so," she said to herself. She went through the badly-lit little passage, and up the steep narrow stairs, with shoulders braced and head up. It was the having made, that day, a decision every worldly-wise person would have condemned, but that she felt in every fibre of her being to be a right one, which had given her that feeling of confidence in herself she had hitherto lacked. She had chosen between comfort, luxury, the approval and adulation of the world, with Reggie Forcus, and the hard up-hill fight for bare existence, with liberty and her own self-respect; and choosing, as she knew, well, she had felt herself to have grown in mental and spiritual stature.
"What has happened to me?" she asked of herself. "I feel like going out to fight battles, to-night."