“Yes, with fatigue—and relief—and thankfulness. Oh, Nelly, it seems wicked to be thankful when I think of that poor man who has lost his child.”
“Mr. Batty?” said Nelly, with a perceptible failure of interest. The introduction of a stranger into the conversation brought her back to ordinary life.
“My dear, she was his child,” said her mother, with gentle reproach.
“But you have made quite sure, perfectly sure?”
“I have seen everybody. Her nurse, her doctor, her father, even the maids—there is nothing in it—nothing. It must have been fright, imagination, nothing more.”
“Thank God!”
This conversation was quite spontaneous and natural; but it would not, I think, have taken place in the hall but for Jane’s presence, whom it was necessary to convince as well as themselves. But for this the mother and daughter would have concealed both their anxiety and their consolatory news till they were alone. And Jane, can it be doubted, knew this, and felt in the superiority of her unconscious cynicism and disbelief in human nature that the whole scene was got up for her benefit, and was a piece of acting. “As if I was to be taken in so easy,” she said to herself; “as if they could come over me like that!”
Innocent lay with her eyes fixed upon the door, longing and waiting for her kind nurses. It was old Alice who sat by her in the interval, holding her head, smoothing the wild locks from her forehead. “My poor lamb!” said Alice. The old woman’s heart was wrung with pity. I do not think she had ever believed Innocent’s story fully. Neither did she believe fully the vindication which Mrs. Eastwood was bringing. She held the poor child’s hand, and looked at her with soft pitying eyes. “My poor lamb!” To Alice, Innocent had always been a creature astray in the world; she did not wonder, like the rest, at this fatal complication in which her heedless feet had been caught. “I aye felt there was something coming,” Alice had said, and her calm had been a support to them all in their excitement. Now she stood aside, and gave up her place to her mistress with far less anxiety than Nelly had shown; but kept behind, listening and watching the one person in the world whom all three could rely upon for life or death. Mrs. Eastwood, weeping and smiling together, came forward, and threw herself on her knees by Innocent’s bed. She kissed her again and again with many sobs. “Put it all away out of your mind,” she cried, “my poor darling, my dear child! Put it all out of your mind. You are as innocent as your name; you had nothing, nothing to do with it. Do you understand me, Innocent? You had nothing to do with it. All you did was to be kind to her, good to her—not to bring her harm.”
“Then she is not dead?” asked Innocent, with a cry of joy.
“She is dead; but you are not to blame. Oh, Innocent, try to understand, try to believe me; you are not to blame. She died of a disease she has had all her life, not of anything that she took.”