Mrs. Plowden looked at Mab and shrugged her shoulders behind her daughter. ‘I can’t think what has come over Florry,’ she said. ‘She has grown so domineering of late—I dare not say a word.’
What Mab thought was that poor Florry looked dark, and pale, and out of heart—she seemed to be losing her good looks and her merry ways. It was rare, very rare, when she put forth any of her old arts of mimicry which the elders laughed yet pretended to frown at, and which all the young ones delighted in; but I will not have it supposed that Mab was so precocious as to divine what was the matter with Florence—for this, to tell the truth, never came into her unconscious thoughts.
The Rector hurried along to see his sister after he had received Mab’s message. He was anxious and disturbed about the state of affairs, and very desirous to find some way of setting his poor Emily straight, and making her independent, as she would be gloriously, did this great fortune come to Mab. If, perhaps, he was at the same time not quite sorry that she had been brought to see she was not so able to do everything for herself as she supposed, and had it proved to her in the most effectual way that to have respectable relatives to fall back upon was the greatest blessing a woman could have, it was no more than natural: and certainly above all, his desire was to be able to help her, and ‘pull her through:’ but it would be uphill work he felt, and require all the efforts that he himself could make. His brow was full of care when he went into the room in which she sat expecting him; not, indeed, looking so serious as he did, but, still, with work enough for all her thoughts.
‘Well?’ he said, as he drew a chair opposite to her, and sat down on the other side of the table at which she sat at her work. He bent forward across this little table, fixing upon her a look of such solemnity that Lady William’s first impulse (though, heaven knows, she was not in a merry mood) was to laugh at his portentous looks, which would have been very inappropriate and improper, and would have shocked Mr. Plowden more than words could say. As she checked herself in this impulse there burst from her instead something which was half a sob and half also a chuckle: but he took it as a sob, which was much the best.
‘My dear,’ he said, ‘my dear!’ putting his hand upon hers, ‘it can’t be so bad as that you should cry about it. We will stick to you, whatever happens. Come, Emily, take heart, take heart!’
‘I am not losing heart,’ she said. ‘I have expected it, you know. It is a distinct demand for my certificates. And now the moment is come when I must decide what to do.’
‘Is this the letter?’ he said. It was lying on the table between them, and Mr. Plowden took it up and read it over with great care, making little comments of distress with his tongue against his palate, ‘Tchich, tchuch,’ as he did so. Lady William went on with her work, raising her eyes to him from time to time as he read. His arrival and his tragic looks had amused her for the moment, but those distressful, inarticulate remarks acted after a while on her imagination and nerves.
‘You think it a very bad business, James? How I wish,’ she said, ‘that John, who never was a friend of mine, could have lived for ever, or carried his dirty money with him to the grave!’
‘I don’t think that is a very Christian wish, Emily.’
‘What, to wish him alive and in enjoyment of all he ever possessed?’