“Not kind at all,” said Mr. Hardcastle, with animation. “It is my duty, and I am never tired of doing my duty. If you have any thing to say to me now—”
Once more Mrs. Preston cast a keen glance at her daughter. And she asked slowly, “What should I have to say?” looking not at the rector, but suspiciously into Pamela’s face.
“My dear friend, how can I tell?” said Mr. Hardcastle. “I have seen a great deal of the world in my time, and come through a great deal. I know how suffering tries and tests the spirit. Don’t be shy of speaking to me. If,” the rector added, drawing a little nearer her pillow, “you would like me to send your attendants away—”
“Am I dying?” said Mrs. Preston, struggling up upon her bed, and looking so pale that Pamela ran to her, thinking it was so. “Am I so ill as that? Do they think I can not last out the time I said?”
“Mamma, mamma, you are a great deal better—you know you are a great deal better. How can you say such dreadful things?” said Pamela, kneeling by the bedside.
“If I am not dying, why do you forestall my own time?” said Mrs. Preston. “Why did you trouble Mr. Hardcastle? It was soon enough on the day I said.”
“My dear friend,” said the rector, “I hope you don’t think it is only when you are dying that you have need of good advice and the counsel of your clergyman. I wish it was more general to seek it always. What am I here for but to be at the service of my parishioners night and day? And every one who is in mental difficulty or distress has a double claim upon me. You may speak with perfect freedom—whatever is said to me is sacred.”
“Then you knew I wanted to speak to you?” said Mrs. Preston. “Thank you, you are very kind. I am not ungrateful. But you knew I wanted to ask your assistance? Somebody sent for you, perhaps?”
“I can not say I was sent for,” said Mr. Hardcastle—with a little confusion, “but I heard—you know, in a country place the faintest wish you can express takes wings to itself, and becomes known everywhere. I understood—I heard—from various quarters—that if I came here—I might be of use to you.”
All the answer Mrs. Preston made to this was to turn round to the head of the bed where Pamela stood, half hidden, in the corner. “That you might have something to tell him a little sooner!” she said. Her voice, though it was very low, so low as to be inaudible to the visitor, was bitter and sharp with pain, and she cast a glance full of reproach and anguish at her only child. She thought she had been betrayed. She thought that, for the lover’s sake, who was dearer than father or mother, her own nursling had forfeited her trust. It was a bitter thought, and she was ill, and weak, and excited, and her mind distorted, so that she could not see things in their proper light. The bitterness was such that Pamela, utterly innocent as she was, sank before it. She did not know what she had done. She did not understand what her mother’s look meant; but she shrank back among the curtains as if she had been really guilty, and it brought to a climax her sense of utter confusion and dismay.