All this she may have deserved, but what she got was very different.
Around her bended neck was flung no hangman's noose, but a gentle arm, the softest and loveliest ever felt, while dark eyes glistened into her own, and seeming to be encouraged there, came closer through a clustering bower; and in less time than it takes to tell, two fair young faces touched each other, and two quick but heavy hearts were throbbing very close together.
"It is more my fault than yours," said Nicie, leading the way to another room, when a few soft words of comfort and good-will had passed; "I am the one who has done all this; and Dr. Gronow says so—or at least he would, if he said what he thinks. It was the low condition caused by long and lonely thinking, and the want of sufficient food and air, and the sense of having no one, not even me."
"But that was her fault. She discouraged you; she showed no affection for you; she was even very angry with you; because you dared to think differently, because you had noble faith and trust."
"For that I deserve no credit, because I could not help it. But I might have been kinder to her, Christie; I might have shown less pride and temper. I might have said to myself more often—'she is sadly shattered; and she is my mother.' It will teach me how to behave another time. For if she does not get well, and forgive me, I shall never forgive myself. I must have forgotten how much easier it is, to be too hard, than to be too soft."
"Probably you never thought about it;" said Christie, who knew a great deal about what were then called "the mental processes"—now gone into much bigger names, but the same nut in a harder shell. "You acted according to your sense of right; and that meant what you felt was right; and that came round to mean—Jemmy."
Nicie, who never examined her mind—perhaps the best thing to be done with it—was not quite satisfied with this abruptly concrete view of the issue. "Perhaps, I did," she said and sighed; because everything felt so cloudy.
"Whatever you did—you are a darling;" said the more experienced one. "There is a lot of trouble before us both. Never mind, if we only stick together. Poor Jemmy believes that he is a wonder. Between us, we will fetch him down."
Nicie could perceive no call for that, being as yet of less practical turn. She was of that admirable, and too rare, and yearly diminishing, type of women, who see and feel that Heaven meant them, not to contend with and outdo, but to comfort, purify, and ennoble that stronger, coarser, and harder half, called men.
"I think that he wants fetching up," she said, with very graceful timidity; "but his sister must know best, of course. Is it right to talk of such things now?"