She had tender, caressing ways, this woman, whose life was still all before her. No one felt neglected when she entered. Her nature was to consider the very dumb animals,—to leave nothing outside the circle within which she stood; and feeling that she might have been a little inconsiderate towards Bessie, she went to seek her, meaning to make amends, to thank her for all her kindness to Lally.
Very softly she opened the door—softly as a mother does who fears to wake her children; for a moment she looked in and hesitated; then, even more softly than she had come, she closed the door and stole along the corridor perplexed and sorrowful.
In the twilight she had seen Bessie kneeling on the floor beside Lally’s bed. She held one of the little girl’s hands tight in hers, and her face was buried in the counterpane. There was no need for singing then. Lally was fast asleep: the busy feet were still, the tireless tongue silent, the curly head quiet enough on the pillow, and Bessie, whom nobody ever beheld depressed in spirits, who was always either laughing or jesting, scolding or teasing, talking or devising some mischief, was sobbing in the gathering darkness as though her very heart were breaking.
If Heather had ever thought any hard thoughts about her visitor, they were swept out of her mind then; if she had ever felt doubts of the girl, those doubts gave place to sympathy and pity; if she had ever felt there was something in Bessie Ormson which she did not comprehend, which she would rather not comprehend, that sensation of repulsion was changed into an earnest desire to understand her thoroughly, into a conviction that in places the stream was dark only because it ran deep.
Vaguely and instinctively all this came into Heather Dudley’s heart. As she retraced her steps along the corridor, she could not have told any one the reason of the great change which had come over her; but a great change, nevertheless, had been effected during the moment she stood looking at the kneeling figure, prostrated in a very abandonment of grief.
From that hour, through good report and through evil, when appearances were in her favour, and when appearances were all against her, unconsciously almost to herself, Heather Dudley loved Bessie Ormson.
In her grief, in her agony of sorrow, in her clinging attachment to Lally, in her passion of despair, of hopelessness, of loneliness, of regret, of indecision, Heather’s heart clave to that of her guest, and her soul was from thenceforth knit to Bessie, as was the soul of Jonathan with the soul of David.
CHAPTER V.
AT SUPPER.
Although Mrs. Ormson, being in her own estimation a great lady, followed the fashions and affected London hours, still, to do her justice, supper was one of those ancient customs it delighted her to see kept up in her nephew’s house.
“I only wish, my dear,” she said to Heather, “we could do as we liked in town, and I would have supper every night of my life instead of that late dinner, which is neither, as Mr. Ormson says, fish, flesh, nor fowl. Now, what can be more cosy and comfortable than this?” and the lady complacently surveyed the supper-table, whereon was spread a meal that might indeed have caused one of Mr. Ormson’s late dinners to hide its diminished head with a sense of grievous humiliation.