“To say my prayers!—I pray beside my darlings’ beds!” exclaimed Mrs. Cheyne, in a startled voice. “Oh no! I never do that. God would not hear such prayers as mine,—never—never!”
“Dear Mrs. Cheyne, why not?” She moved restlessly away at the question, and tried to disengage herself from Phillis’s firm grasp. “The Divine Father hears all prayers,” whispered the girl.
“All?—but not mine,—not mine, or I should not be sitting here alone. Do you know my husband left me in anger,—that his last words to me were the bitterest he ever spoke? ‘Good-by, Magdalene: you have made my life so wretched that I do not care if I never live to set foot in this house again!’ And that to me,—his wedded wife, and the mother of his children,—who loved him so. Oh, Herbert! Herbert!” and, covering her face, the unhappy woman suddenly burst into a passion of tears.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER.
Phillis kept a sad silence: not for worlds would she have checked the flow of tears that must have been so healing to the tortured brain. Besides, what was there that she, so young and inexperienced, could say in the presence of a grief so terrible, so overpowering? The whole thing was inexplicable to Phillis. Why were the outworks of conventionality so suddenly thrown 203 down? Why was she, a stranger, permitted to be a witness of such a revelation? As she sat there speechless and sympathizing, a faint sound reached her ear,—the rustle of a dress in the adjoining room,—footsteps that approached warily, and then paused; a moment afterwards the door closed softly behind them. Phillis looked round quickly, but could see nothing; and the same instant a peal of thunder rolled over their heads.
Mrs. Cheyne started up with an hysterical scream, and caught hold of Phillis. “Come,” she said, almost wildly, “we will not stay here. The children will not come to-night, for who could hear their voices in such a storm? My little angels!—but they shall not see me like this. Come, come!” And, taking the girl by the arm, she almost dragged her from the room, and led the way with rapid and disordered footsteps to a large luxurious chamber, furnished evidently as a dressing-room, and only divided from the sleeping-room by a curtained archway.
As Mrs. Cheyne threw herself down in an arm-chair and hid her face in her hands, the curtain was drawn back, and Miss Mewlstone came in with an anxious, almost frightened expression on her good-natured countenance. She hurried up to Mrs. Cheyne and took her in her arms as though she were a child.