“Then she is quite——safe?” said Letitia with a slight shudder.
“My lady!” said the woman with indignation. “She was never but like a blessed lamb even at the worst.”
“I know; I know. She was always gentle. Don’t think badly of me,” said Mrs. Parke, “but I’ve a great horror of—of that sort of thing. Would you mind coming in with me? And just be near me, please, whatever might happen. It would give me great confidence. If you only look at her, it’s enough, isn’t it? Oh! do stay by me when I go in, please.”
“You are doing my poor lady great injustice,” said the attendant with outraged dignity.
“Oh, no—not that—but you’ll stand by me, won’t you?” Letitia said. She went on towards Mary’s door with a slackened step. Not even the assurance she had received, not her conviction that what the nurse said was true, could stand against her conscience, and sense of what she deserved from Mary. She might be a lamb to others, but Letitia had no right to count upon her as a lamb. When she opened the door she looked back and beckoned to the attendant, who was slowly following. “You’ll stand by me?” she said again, and eventually knocked at Mary’s door.
Lady Frogmore and her sister were together in the room. Mary had been trying to read a little in a good book. To read anything that might amuse her, that would draw her thoughts from herself and her sorrow, would have been profane, almost wicked. Mary was far too dutiful to think of anything of the kind, but it was not wrong, it was indeed edifying, to read a little of a sermon about heaven. It conveyed, indeed, no idea at all to the poor lady’s mind, and to think of Lord Frogmore as having been swept up among those abstractions was quite impossible: but still it was a right thing to do. She put it down, however, with alacrity when she heard Letitia’s knock at the door, and came forward a step or two as much as was decorous to meet her sister-in-law. A newly-made widow must not hurry forward with extended hands. It is her place to keep still, to have her visitors brought up to her. “Here I and sorrow sit.” Mary was very observant of all the conventionalities; but when Letitia, trembling, came up to her and put her shaking arms around her, Mary responded with a cordiality which overwhelmed the visitor. She held Letitia close, and wept upon her shoulder, Mrs. Parke trembling all the time, restraining herself with an effort of horror from shrieking, and not at all sure that she might not be rent to pieces at the end of the embrace. “Oh, Letitia! it is all over, all over. My poor old lord is gone,” cried Mary, sobbing. She added, a moment after in a voice that went through and through the hearts of the other listeners, but struck upon that of Mrs. John Parke like some strange chord of which she had no understanding, “and after all there is no harm done to you! It is my only consolation. After all there is no harm done to you!”
“Oh, Mary! It is a sad blow to us all, but we must bear it,” said Letitia, disengaging herself from the embrace which she so feared. She cast a glance round to see that the nurse was near, and strengthened by this, sat down at a little distance from the new-made widow. “It is a great loss,” she said, putting up her handkerchief to her eyes; “so kind to us as he always was. But we must seek for resignation and strength to bear it.”
“Indeed he was kind to everybody,” said Agnes, hoping to keep the strange interview upon safe ground.
“And what a good thing you were able to come back to be with him at the last!” said Mrs. John.
“My dear Letitia,” said Mary, “I can’t find words to tell you. You must not think I will feel it that you should have my name—or that Mr. Parke should have his name. Oh, no! I shall not. You must not put aside your rights out of any thought of me. I am only the Dowager now, and you are Lady Frogmore.”