“What is madness? Are my eyes mad that saw mamma? I was not thinking of seeing her. In a moment I lifted up my eyes, and she was there. Is it madness that she should die? Oh no, more wonderful how she can live; or madness to think that her heart would fly to us—oh, like an arrow, the moment it was free?”
“Rosalind,” said Mrs. Lennox, “poor Grace was a very religious woman; at that moment she would be thinking about her Maker.”
“Do you think she would be afraid of him?” cried Rosalind, “afraid that our Lord would be jealous, that he would not like her to love her children? Oh, that’s not what my mother thought! My religion is what I got from her. She was not afraid of him—she loved him. She would know that he would let her come, perhaps bring her and stand by her; perhaps,” the girl cried, clasping her hands, “if I had been better, more religious, more like my mother, I should have seen him in the room too.”
John Trevanion seized her hands almost fiercely. Short of giving up his own self-control, and yielding to this stormy tide of emotion, it was the only thing he could do. “I must have an end of this,” he said. “Rosalind, you must be calm—we shall all go distracted if you continue so. She was a good woman, as Sophy says. She never could, I don’t believe it, have gratified herself at your expense like this. I shall telegraph the first thing in the morning to the lawyers, to know if they have any news. Will that satisfy you? Suspend your judgment till I hear; if then it turns out that there is any cause—” Here his voice broke and yielded to the strain of emotion; upon which Rosalind, whose face had been turned away, rose up suddenly and flung herself upon him as Amy had done upon her, crying, “Oh, my mother! oh, my mother! you loved her too, Uncle John.”
Thus the passion of excited feeling extended itself. For a moment John Trevanion sobbed too, and the girl felt, with a sensation of awe which calmed her, the swelling of the man’s breast. He put her down in her chair next moment with a tremulous smile. “No more, Rosalind—we must not all lose our senses. I promise you if there is any truth in your imagination you shall not want my sympathy. But I am sure you are exciting yourself unnecessarily; I know I should have heard had there been anything wrong. My dear, no more now.”
Next morning John Trevanion was early astir. He had slept little, and his mind was full of cares. In the light of the morning he felt a little ashamed of the agitation of last night, and of the credulity to which he himself had been drawn by Rosalind’s excitement. He said to himself that no doubt it was in the imagination of little Amy that the whole myth had arisen. The child had been sleepless, as children often are, and no doubt she had formed to herself that spectre out of the darkness which sympathy and excitement and solitude had embodied to Rosalind also. Nothing is more contagious than imagination. He had himself been all but overpowered by Rosalind’s impassioned certainty. He had felt his own firmness waver; how much more was an emotional girl likely to waver, who did not take into account the tangle of mental workings even in a child? As he came out into the cool morning air it all seemed clear enough and easy; but the consequences were not easy, nor how he was to break the spell, and recall the visionary child and the too sympathetic girl to practical realities, and dissipate these fancies out of their heads. He was not very confident in his own powers; he thought they were quite as likely to overcome him as he to restore them to composure. But still something must be done, and the scene changed at least. As he came along the corridor from his room, with a sense of being the only person waking in this part of the house, though the servants had long been stirring below, his ear was caught by a faint, quick sound, and a whispering call from the apartment occupied by his sister. He looked round quickly, fearful, as one is in a time of agitation, of every new sound, and saw another actor in the little drama, one whose name had not yet been so much as mentioned as taking any part in it—the sharp, inquisitive, matter-of-fact little Sophy, who was the one of the children he liked least. Sophy made energetic gestures to stop him, and with elaborate precaution came out of her room attired in a little dressing-gown of blue flannel, with bare feet in slippers, and her hair hanging over her shoulders. He stood still in the passage with great impatience while she elaborately closed the door behind her, and came towards him on her toes, with an evident enjoyment of the mystery. “Oh, Uncle John! hush, don’t make any noise,” Sophy said.
“Is that all you want to tell me?” he asked severely.
“No, Uncle John; but we must not wake these poor things, they are all asleep. I want to tell you—do you think we are safe here and nobody can hear us? Please go back to your room. If any one were to come and see me, in bare feet and my dressing-gown—”
He laughed somewhat grimly, indeed with a feeling that he would like to whip this important little person; but Sophy detected no under-current of meaning. She cried “Hush!” again, with the most imperative energy, under her breath, and swinging by his arm drew him back to his room, which threw a ray of morning sunshine down the passage from its open door. The man was a little abashed by the entrance of this feminine creature, though she was but thirteen, especially as she gave a quick glance round of curiosity and sharp inspection. “What an awfully big sponge, and what a lot of boots you have!” she said quickly. “Uncle John! they say one ought never to watch or listen or anything of that sort; but when everybody was in such a state last night, how do you think I could just stay still in bed? I saw that lady come out of the children’s room, Uncle John.”
The child, though her eyes were dancing with excitement and the delight of meddling, and the importance of what she had to say, began at this point to change color, to grow red and then pale.