There was not the slightest tinge of vindictiveness in her tone, as indeed she felt none; the desire to come with flying colours out of a tight place, coupled with a very sincere if cool pity for the victims before her, leaving no place for any less amiable feeling in her mind.
“But we do not think you a wicked girl; it was all a misapprehension, and we quite see that we ought never to have shown you that—that disgraceful letter, or taken any notice of it. It was contrary to my opinion that it was shown you. No doubt the person whose idea it was, meant well, and we have got into a way of depending on her judgment; but it will be a long time before I can forgive her for the harm she has done.”
“She always means well,” Catherine interjected, casting a reproachful glance out of tear-brimmed eyes at her mother for thus throwing the family oracle to the wolves.
“I suppose that you are alluding to Miss Barnacre,” Bonnybell said mildly, and glad to escape from the main issue into any side alley of the subject, “but please do not blame her; from her point of view she was perfectly right.”
“It is very generous of you to say so”—giving a final push overboard to the family sage—“and she will be as ready as we are to beg your pardon. She shall do it as soon as we get home. I am come to take you home with us.”
There was a quivering asseveration in the announcement of this intention that tried to exclude all possibility of question from it, but Bonnybell only gently shook her head.
“I dare not go back without you! I dare not face him! I do not know what you have done to him, but—oh no”—hurriedly correcting her phrase, in fear of its giving offence, “I do not mean that you have done anything; but—the—possibility of losing you—not that there is any danger of it now that everything is explained—has almost unhinged his reason.”
Once again a very profound regret for the completeness of her own handiwork occupied Miss Ransome’s mind, and for one second the idea of yielding to the frantic entreaties of the poor mother before her, who had got hold of her hands, and was unconsciously but painfully grinding their little knuckles together, presented itself. One “yes” would end this odious scene—odious since the humiliation of her humiliators gave her none of the gratification she had faintly anticipated from it; and, after all, marriage with Toby would still be, in a sense, the harbour of refuge she had once thought it. But before she had taken any false step, a head much stronger than her heart and a poignant recollection of the horrors of yesterday came to her rescue. The anchorage was not nearly so good as she had believed, and how could any union be endurable between two persons whose views of matrimony differed so diametrically as hers and Toby’s? Hers a cool commercial bargain, sweetened by camaraderie and lightened by indifference; his—a sick qualm passed over her at the recollection, only twenty-four hours old, of yesterday’s agony of balked animalism; and the knowledge, relieved by no maiden ignorance, that the detested experience was only the porch to the mansion which Toby had prepared for her to dwell in.
But the instant of hesitation gave the crushed Catherine time and opportunity to throw in a phrase of exaggerated humility.
“Would you mind telling us what else we can do?”