“To-morrow!” he said. “I’ll give you till to-morrow to think it over, and then— I’ll do for myself whatever I find it best to do.”
For a minute or two after the closing of the door, which was noisy and sharp, there was no further movement in the dim room. Mrs. Trevanion sat motionless, even from thought. The framework of the chair supported her, held her up, but for the moment, as it seemed to her, nothing else in earth and heaven. She sat entirely silent, passive, as she had done so often during these years, all her former habits of mind arrested. Once she had been a woman of energy, to whom a defeat or discouragement was but a new beginning, whose resources were manifold; but all these had been exhausted. She sat in the torpor of that hopelessness which had become habitual to her, life failing and everything in life. As she sat thus an inner door opened, and another figure, which had grown strangely like her own in the close and continual intercourse between them, came in softly. Jane was noiseless as her mistress, almost as worn as her mistress, moving like a shadow across the room. Her presence made a change in the motionless atmosphere. Madam was no longer alone; and with the softening touch of that devotion which had accompanied all her wanderings for so great a portion of her life, there arose in her a certain re-awakening, a faint flowing of the old vitality. There were, indeed, many reasons why the ice should be broken and the stream resume its flowing. She raised herself a little in her chair, and then she spoke. “Jane,” she said; “Jane, I have news of the children—”
“God bless them,” said Jane. She put the books down out of her hands, which she had been pretending to arrange, and turned her face towards her mistress, who said “Amen!” with a sudden gleam and lighting-up of her pale face like the sky after a storm.
“I have done very wrong,” said Mrs. Trevanion; “there is never self-indulgence in the world but some one suffers for it. Jane, my little Amy is ill. She dreams about her poor mother. She has taken to walking in her sleep.”
“Well, Madam, that’s no great harm. I have heard of many children who did—”
“But not through—oh, such selfish folly as mine! I have grown so weak, such a fool! And they have sent for Russell, and Russell is here. You may meet her any day—”
“Russell!” Jane said, with an air of dismay, clasping her hands; “then, Madam, you must make up your mind what you will do, for Russell is not one to be balked. She will find us out.”
“Why should I fear to be found out?” said Mrs. Trevanion, with a faint smile. “No one now can harm me. Jane, everything has been done that can be done to us. I do not fear Russell or any one. And sometimes it seems to me that I have been wrong all along. I think now I have made up my mind—”
“To what? oh, to what, Madam?” Jane cried.
“I am not well,” said Mrs. Trevanion; “I am only a shadow of myself. I am not at all sure but perhaps I may be going to die. No, no— I have no presentiments, Jane. It is only people who want to live who have presentiments, and life has few charms for me. But look at me; you can see through my hands almost. I am dreadfully tired coming up those stairs. I should not be surprised if I were to die.”