“It is because I respect her that I say anything. Oh, it is all horrible! And already the men and everybody are discussing, What will Nelly do? The widow, what will she do?”
Then the excited creature suddenly, without warning, broke out into sobbing and tears. “Oh, don’t think it is for grief,” she said, as Frances instinctively came towards her; “it’s only the excitement, the horror of it, the feeling that it is coming so near. I never was in the house with Death, never, that I can remember. And I shall be the chief mourner, don’t you know? They will want me to do all sorts of things. What do you do when you are a widow, Lady Markham? Have you to give orders for the funeral, and say what sort of a—coffin there is to be, and—all that?”
“Nelly, Nelly! Oh, for God’s sake, don’t say those dreadful things. You know you will not be troubled about anything, least of all—— And, my dear, my dear, recollect your husband is still alive. It is dreadful to talk of details such as those for a living man.”
“Most likely,” she said, looking up with a shiver, “he will be dead when I get home. Oh, I wish it might all be over, everything, before I go home. Couldn’t you hide me somewhere, Lady Markham? Save me from seeing him and all those—details, as you call them. I cannot bear it; and I have no mother nor any one to come to me—nobody, nobody but Sarah Winterbourn.”
“I will go home with you, Nelly; I will take you back, my dear. Frances, take care of her till I get my bonnet. My poor child, compose yourself. Try and be calm. You must be calm, and bear it,” Lady Markham said.
Frances, with alarm, found herself left alone with this strange being—not much older than herself, and yet thrown amid such tragic elements. She stood by her, not knowing how to approach the subject of her thoughts, or indeed any subject—for to talk to her of common things was impossible. Mrs Winterbourn, however, did not turn towards Frances. Her sobbing ended suddenly, as it had begun. She sat with her head upon her hands, gazing at the light. After a while she said, though without looking round, “You once offered to sit up with me, thinking, or pretending, I don’t know which, that I was sitting up with him all night: would you have done so if you had been in my place?”
“I think—I don’t know,” said Frances, checking herself.
“You would—you are not straightforward enough to say it—I know you would; and in your heart you think I am a bad creature, a woman without a heart.”
“I don’t think so,” said Frances. “You must have a heart, or you would not be so unhappy.”
“Do you know what I am unhappy about? About myself. I am not thinking of him; he married me to please himself, not me,—and I am thinking of myself, not him. It is all fair. You would do the same if you married like me.”