Suddenly Mr. Pell came in, our old friend Octavius, sent for in an urgent manner, and looking as a man looks who feels but cannot open on the hinge of his existence. Like a thorough gentleman, he had been shy of the cottage, although aware of their distress; eager at once and reluctant, partly because it stood not in his but his rectorʼs parish, partly for deeper reasons.
Though Pell came in so quietly, Bull Garnet rose at his entry, or tried to rise on the pillow, swept his daughter back by a little motion of his thumb, which she quite understood, and cast his eyes on the parsonʼs with a languid yet strong intelligence. He had made up his mind that the man was good, and yet he could not help probing him.
The last characteristic act of poor Bull Garnetʼs life, a life which had been all character, all difference, from other people.
“Will you take my daughterʼs hand, Pell?”
“Only too gladly,” answered Pell; but she shrank away, and sobbed at him.
“Pearl, come forward this moment. It is no time for shilly–shallying.”
The poor thing timidly gave her hand, standing a long way back from Pell, and with her large eyes streaming, yet fixed upon her father, and no chance at all of wiping them.
“Now, Pell, do you love my daughter? I am dying, and I ask you.”
“That I do, with all my heart,” said Pell, like a downright Englishman. “I shall never love any other.”
“Now, Pearl, do you love Mr. Pell?” Her fatherʼs eyes were upon her in a way that commanded truth. She remembered how she had told a lie, at the age of seven or eight, and that gaze had forced it out of her, and she had never dared to tell one since, until no lie dared come near her.