“Did you think how your own brothers and sisters would have stood up for you? that it would have been an offence to them if anybody had come to the house who was not a friend to you? that they would have had a right—”
“Miss May,” said the culprit; “all this I have felt to the bottom of my heart; that I was here on false pretences—that I had no right to be here. But this painful feeling was all quenched and extinguished, and turned into gratitude by the goodness of your father and brother. I did not even know that you had not been told. I thought you were aware from the beginning. You were colder than they were, and I thought it was natural, quite natural, for it is easier to forgive for one's self than for those one loves; and then I thought you melted and grew kinder to me, that you saw how all my ideas were changed, all my feelings—my mind itself; changed by the great charity, the wonderful goodness I have found here!”
“Mr. Northcote!” Ursula had been struggling to break in all the time; but while he spoke her words dispersed, her feelings softened, and at the end she found nothing but that startled repetition of his name with which to answer him. No doubt if he had given her time the eloquence would have come back; but he was too much in earnest to be guilty of such a mistake.
“What can I say about it?” cried the young man. “It has filled me with shame and with happiness. I have been taken in my own trap—those whom I attacked as you say—went out of my way to attack, and abused like a fool because I knew nothing about them—have shown me what the Bible means. Your father and brother knew what I had done, they met me separately, quite independent of each other, and both of them held out their hands to me; why, except that I had offended them, I cannot tell. A stranger, belonging to an obscure class, I had no claim upon them except that I had done what ought to have closed their house against me. And you know how they have interpreted that. They have shown me what the Bible means.”
The two girls sat listening, both with their heads bent towards him, and their eyes fixed upon his face. When he stopped, Janey got up with her work in her lap, and coming a little nearer to Ursula, addressed her in a wondering voice.
“Is it papa he is talking of like that?” she said, under her breath.
“Yes,” he said, fervently, turning to her. “It is your father. He has made charity and kindness real things to me.”
“Poor papa!” said Ursula, whose tears were arrested in her eyes by the same surprised sensation, half-pleasure, half-pain, which hushed even Janey's voice. They were “struck,” as Mrs. Hurst had said, but by such a strange mingling of feelings that neither knew what to make of them. Northcote did not understand what they meant; their words conveyed a slight shock of surprise, but no distinct idea to him; and when Janey, too much impressed to settle down again, went away after a while musingly, carrying her work in the upper skirt of her gown, held like a market-woman's apron by her elbow against her side; and he found himself to have attained in the very confusion of his intentions to what he wished, i.e., an interview with Ursula by herself, he was almost too much agitated to take advantage of it. As for Ursula, she had floated a hundred miles away from that sensation of last night which, had no stronger feeling come in to bewilder her, would have made his errand very plain to her mind. She had ceased to think about him, she was thinking with a certain tenderness, and wondering, half-awed, half-amused, self-questioning, about her father. Was he so good as this? had he done this Christian action? were they all perhaps doing papa injustice? She was recalled to herself by Northcote's next proceeding. He went to the door and closed it after Janey, who had left it open, of course, and then he came to the back of the chair on which stood the great basket of darning. His voice was tremulous, his eyes liquid and shining with emotion.
“Will you forgive me, since they have forgiven me? and may I ask you something?” he said.