“I have a fancy to stay, uncle,” she answered; “just as I said before, to wish him health and happiness before I leave Marshlands for ever. Most likely I shall never enter its doors again—let my last thought of the old home be a gracious one.”
And there came such a sad, wistful look into the sweet face that Mr. Aggland could press the point no further. He only said it should all be as she wished, and entreated her to lie down and recruit her strength, so that when the journey had to be taken she might be ready for it.
“I hope to see the colour back in your cheeks some day, my dear,” he concluded. “We will all take such care of you when we get you among us once more, that you shall not have any choice left but to get well and strong again. With all your life still before you, it will never do for you to settle down into a desponding invalid.”
“Have patience,” Phemie answered; “let me only get this meeting over—let me once begin a new existence elsewhere, and I will try to make a good thing of it.”
“Have you not made a good thing of it?” he asked; but Mrs. Stondon shook her head.
“We will not talk about the past,” she replied; “the present is enough for us, surely. Let me go now, uncle,” she added; “I want to be quiet for a time, quiet and alone.”
Mr. Aggland followed her with his eyes, as she ascended the staircase. He felt there was something about Phemie which he could not understand—which he had never understood—“and which I probably never shall,” he decided, when he heard a distant door close behind her. “I do think she is very odd but somehow very sweet.”
Could he have seen what Phemie was doing at that very moment, he would have thought her odder still.
She was standing before her mirror, looking at all that was left of the Phemie who had once been so beautiful; looking at the pale, wan face, at the sharpened features, at the dark lines under her eyes, at the lines across her forehead, at her figure round and symmetrical no longer, at the ghastly whiteness of her cheeks, at the widow’s cap which concealed her hair, at the black trailing dress.
Her beauty! Ah, Heaven! that had been a dream too, and it was gone—like her youth, like her gaiety, like her pride, like her vanity, like her innocence of soul—gone for ever.