An hour passed. Aunt Anne opened her eyes.
“Could you put me by the fire, my dear? I am very cold.”
“Yes, of course I can; but wait a moment. Clarke will come and help me. Clarke,” she called, “I want you to come and help me to move Mrs. Baines.
“Now you look more comfortable,” she said, when it was done. “There is a footstool for your feet, and the peacock beside you to keep you company.”
Aunt Anne sat still for a moment, looking at the fire.
“My dear,” she said presently, “I have been thinking of what you said; we have both suffered very much; we ought to be together. Only now you have the hope of a new life before you. But we have both suffered,” she repeated.
Mrs. North knelt down beside her with a long sigh. “Suffered,” she said. “Oh, dear old lady, if you only knew what I have suffered; the loneliness of my girlhood, the misery of my marriage, the perpetual hunger for happiness, the struggle to get it. And oh! the longing to be loved, and the madness when love came, and then—then—but you know,” she whispered, passionately—“I need not go over it; the shame, and the publicity, and the relief I dared not to acknowledge even to myself, when I was set free. And then the awful dread that even he, the man for whom I did it all, would perhaps despise me as the rest of the world did. I am not wicked naturally, I am not, indeed; I don’t think any woman on this green earth has loved beautiful things and longed to do righteous things, more than I have, or felt the misery of failure more bitterly.”
“It will come right now, my love,” Aunt Anne said gently. “You are young; it will all come right. You said you had a telegram, and that he was coming back?”
“Yes, he is coming back,” Mrs. North answered, in a low voice; “but I do not want him to set it right because I did the wrong for him, or just to make reparation from a sense of honour. I do not want to spoil his life; for some people will cut him if he marries me; it is only—only—if he loves me still, and more than all the world, as I do him—that is the only chance of it all coming right. It is time I had a letter. But here is your beef-tea. Let us try and forget all our troubles, and get a little peace together.” She looked up with an April-day smile, took the beef-tea from Clarke, and, holding it before Aunt Anne, watched with satisfaction every mouthful she took.
“I fear I give you a great deal of trouble,” the old lady said gratefully.