“Maria! are you looking worse this evening? Or is the light deceiving me?”
“I dare say I am looking worse. I am worse. I am very ill, Cecil.”
“You do not look fit to embark on this voyage.”
Maria simply shook her head. She was sitting now in an old-fashioned arm-chair, one white hand lying on her black dress, the other supporting her chin, while the firelight played on her wasted features.
“Would the little change to Ashlydyat benefit you, Maria? If so, if it would help to give you strength for your voyage, come to us at once. Now don’t refuse! It will give us so much pleasure. You do not know how Lord Averil loves and respects you. I think there is no one he respects as he respects you. Let me take you home with me now.”
Maria’s eyelashes were wet as she turned them on her. “Thank you, Cecil, for your kindness: and Lord Averil—will you tell him so for me—I am always thanking in my heart. I wish I could go home with you; I wish I could go with any prospect of it doing me good; but that is over. I shall soon be in a narrower home than this.”
Lady Averil’s heart stood still and then bounded on again. “No, no! Surely you are mistaken! It cannot be.”
“I have suspected it long, Cecil! but since the last day or two it has become certainty, and even Mr. Snow acknowledges it. About this time yesterday, he was sitting here in the twilight, and I bade him not conceal the truth from me. I told him that I knew it, and did not shrink from it; and therefore it was the height of folly for him to pretend ignorance to me.”
“Oh, Maria! And have you no regret at leaving us? I should think it a dreadful thing if I were going to die.”
“I have been battling with my regrets a long while,” said Maria, bending her head and speaking in low, subdued tones. “Leaving Meta is the worst. I know not who will take her, who will protect her: she cannot go with George, without—without a mother!”