“I flatter myself, I am Hester’s oldest friend,” he said, “and we have quarrelled in our day. She had many disadvantages in her childhood. She wanted a mother’s hand; but I always did justice to her noble qualities. Hester is—well, she is more my own child than any one else ever can be. I feel as if I had found her again—and she is—”
“I am here, Mr. Osborne,” cried I—“oh, don’t, don’t; you only humiliate me when you praise me!”
For there was he sitting silent while I was commended, hearing about my youth, and perhaps smiling at it bitterly in his heart. It struck me down to the very dust to be commended before him; I would rather have been blamed, for then the unconscious comparison which I always supposed him making between what he knew and what he heard would have been less to my disadvantage. Mr. Osborne did not know how his kind word and the affectionate tone which even now touched my heart, and would have made me very grateful under any other circumstances, wounded and abased me now.
When I spoke, my husband raised his head, and threw a furtive glance at me—what could he be thinking? I shrank before his eye, as if I had been practising some guilty act, as if I had conspired with Mr. Osborne to insinuate to him that he had not sufficient regard for me.
“I praise you, Hester! did you ever hear me?” said Mr. Osborne, smiling; “I was but telling Miss Ennerdale how you exhibited your baby to-day; and your young cousin, Hester, is not to be moved out of the opinion that your boy is the beau-ideal of boys—my dear child,” he said, suddenly lowering his voice, and coming to take a seat beside me, “she is very like your mother.”
“Will you sing to Mr. Osborne, Flora?” said I. “I think she is very like my mother, indeed, and she is very happy, and will be very happy; there is no cloud coming to her.”
He shook his head, but was silent, as Flora began to sing. My husband took a book, but I know he did not read a word of it. He sat listening as I did to some of those velvety drawing-room love-songs, which Flora had purely because they were “the fashion,” and some others of a better kind, which the girl’s own better taste had chosen. Mr. Osborne did not admire them as I did. He shook his head again slightly, and said, “A very good girl—a very good girl,” as Flora’s sweet young voice ran over verse after verse to please him. “That is not like your mother, Hester,” he said; but it was Mr. Osborne that was changed, it was not the music. He had been no connoisseur in the old days.
When Flora closed the piano it was nearly time to go to rest—and I was very glad to find it so. My husband and I were left last in the room when our visitors had retired—and when I went to bid him good night, he took my hand in both of his and put it to his forehead and his lips. I was very much agitated—I faltered out, “Have you anything to say to me?” I could find no other words, and he said, “No—no, nothing but good night.”
THE EIGHTH DAY.
MR. Osborne was gone—Flora was gone—and we had relapsed into our former quietness. The neighboring ladies called upon me, and I called upon them in return; but I had no heart either to give or to accept invitations, for our personal relations to each other were unchanged; and though there was peace, entire dead peace, never broken by an impatient word or a hasty exclamation, there was no comfort in this gloomy house of ours. We were so courteous to each other, so afraid to give trouble, so full of thanks for any little piece of service! To my vehement temper strife itself was even better than this, and many times I almost fled out of the house, hurried, at least as much as I could decorously, to refresh my fevered mind in the fresh air, and ponder over our position again and again.