“Would it be worse than if it was your own?” asked Elsie.
“A great deal worse. When you do what’s wrong yourself, everything that is in you rises up to excuse it. You say to yourself, Dear me, what are they all making such a work about? it is no so very bad, it was because I could not help it, or it was without meaning any harm, or it was just—something or other; but when it is another person, you see it in all its blackness and without thinking of any excuse. And then when it’s your own sin, you can repent and try to make up for it, or to confess it and beg for pardon both to him you have wronged, and to God, but especially to him that is wronged, for that is the hardest. And in any way you just have it in your own hands. But you cannot repent for another person, nor can you make up, nor give her the right feelings; you have just to keep silent, and wonder what will happen next.”
“You are meaning something in particular, mother?” Elsie said.
“Oh, hold your tongue with your nonsense, everything that is, is something in particular,” Mrs. Buchanan said. She had been listening to a rustle of silk going past the drawing-room door; she paused and listened, her face growing a little pale, putting out her hand to hinder any noise, which would prevent her from hearing. Elsie in turn watched her, staring, listening too, gradually making the strange discovery that her mother’s trouble was connected with the coming of Mrs. Mowbray, a discovery which disturbed the girl greatly, though she could not make out to herself how it was.
Mrs. Buchanan could not refrain from a word on the same subject to her husband. When she went to his room after his visitor was gone, she found him with his elbows supported on his table and his face hidden in his hands. He started at her entrance, and raised his head suddenly with a somewhat scared countenance towards her: and then drawing his papers towards him, he began to make believe that he had been writing. “Well, my dear,” he said, turning a little towards her, but without raising his eyes.
“Claude, my dear, what ails you that you should start like that—when it’s just me, your own wife, coming into the room?”
“Did I start?” he said; “no, I don’t think I started: but I did not hear you come in.” Then with a pretence at a smile he added, “I have just had a visit from that weariful woman, Mrs. Mowbray. It was an evil day for me when she was shown the way up here.”
“But surely, Claude,” said Mrs. Buchanan, “it was by your will that she ever came up here.”
“Is that all you know, Mary?” he said, with a smile. “Who am I, that I can keep out a woman who is dying to speak about herself, and thinks there is no victim so easy as the minister. It is just part of the day’s duty, I suppose.”
“But you were never, that I remember, taigled in this way before,” Mrs. Buchanan said.