As he spoke, he heard the steps creak, Urith was ascending the stairs, coming to her mother, to throw herself on her knees at her side, clasp her hand, and add her entreaties to those of Luke Cleverdon.
"Help me up!" said Mrs. Malvine.
Then the curate put his arm to her, and raised her into a sitting position. Her face had altered its expression from peevishness to anger. It was grey, with a green tinge about the nose and lips, the lines from the nostrils to the chin were deep and dark. Her eyes had a hard, threatening, metallic glimmer in them.
At that moment Urith appeared in the doorway. Luke stood, with his hand to his chin, and head bowed, looking at the woman.
"You are here, Urith!" said she, holding out her hand towards her spread out. "You have dared—dared to love the man who has dishonoured your father's grave. You have come here to ask me to sanction and bless this love." She gasped for breath. Her face was livid, haggard; but her dark eyes were literally blazing—shooting out deadly-cold glares of hate. The sweat-drops ran off her brow and dropped upon the sheet. The lips were drawn from the teeth. There was in her appearance something of unearthly horror. "You shall never—never obtain from me what you want. If you have any respect for your father's name—any love lingering in your heart for the mother that bore you—you will shake him off, and never speak to him again." She remained panting, and gulping, and shivering. So violent was her emotion that it suffocated her.
"I know," she continued, in a lower tone, and with her hands flat on the coverlet before her, "what you do not—how my life has been turned to wormwood. His mother stood between me and my happiness—between me and your father's heart; and, after what I have endured, shall I forgive that? Aye, and a double injury—the wrong done by Margaret Penwarne's son to my husband's grave?—Never!"
She began to move herself in bed, as though trying to scramble up into a standing posture, and again her hand was threateningly extended. "Never—never shall this come about. Urith! I charge you——"
The girl, alarmed, ran towards her mother. The old woman warned her back. "What! will you do violence to me to stay my words? Will you throttle me to prevent them from coming out of my lips?"
Again she made an effort to rise, and scrambled to her knees: "I pray heaven, if he dares to enter my doors, that he may be struck down on my hearth—lifeless!"
She gave a gasp, shivered, and fell back on the bed.