They all stood gazing at each other for a moment, the others not divining what this interruption might mean, and feeling instinctively driven back upon conventional self-restraint and propriety, by the entrance of the new-comer. Lady Augusta unclasped her hands, and stole back guiltily to her chair. Edgar recovered his wits, and placed one for Lady Mary. Gussy dropped upon the sofa behind her mother, and cast a secret glance of triumph at him from eyes still wet with tears. He alone remained standing, a culprit still on his trial, who felt the number of his judges increased, without knowing whether his cause would take a favourable or unfavourable aspect in the eyes of the new occupant of the judicial bench.
“What have you all been doing?” said Lady Mary—“you look as much confused and scared by my appearance as if I had disturbed you in the midst of some wrong-doing or other. Am I to divine what has happened? It is what I was coming to warn you against; I was going to say that I could no longer answer for Mr. Earnshaw—”
“I have spoken for myself,” said Edgar. “Lady Augusta knows that all my ideas and my duties have changed. I do not think I need stay longer. I should prefer to write to Mr. Thornleigh at once, unless Lady Augusta objects; but I can take no final negative now from anyone but Gussy herself.”
“And that he shall never have!” cried Gussy, with a ring of premature triumph in her voice. Her mother turned round upon her again with a glance of fire.
“Is that the tone you have learned among the Sisters?” said Lady Augusta, severely. “Yes, go, Mr. Earnshaw, go—we have had enough of this.”
Edgar was perhaps as much shaken as any of them by all he had gone through. He went up to Lady Augusta, and took her half-unwilling hand and kissed it.
“Do you remember,” he said, “dear Lady Augusta, when you cried over me in my ruin, and kissed me like my mother? I cannot forget it, if I should live a hundred years. You have never abandoned me, though you feared me. Say one kind word to me before I go.”
Lady Augusta tried hard not to look at the supplicant. She turned her head away, she gulped down a something in her throat which almost overcame her. The tears rushed to her eyes.
“Don’t speak to me!” she cried—“don’t speak to me! Shall I not be a sufferer too? God bless you, Edgar! I have always felt like your mother. Go away!—go away!—don’t speak to me any more!”
Edgar had the sense to obey her without another look or word. He did not even pause to glance at Gussy (at which she was much aggrieved), but left the room at once. And then Gussy crept to her mother’s side, and knelt down there, clinging with her arms about the vanquished Rhadamantha; and the three women kissed each other, and cried together, not quite sure whether it was for sorrow or joy.