“That’s what she said,” Mrs. Gilson repeated without a blush. “And for my part I don’t see why she’s to be persecuted. What with you and that sneaking parson, who’s for ever at her skirts, and another that shall be nameless——”
“Just so!” said Bishop, nodding.
But whereas he meant Walterson, the good woman meant Mr. Hornyold.
“——her life’s not her own!” the landlady ended.
“Well, she’s to be brought up next Thursday,” the runner replied in dudgeon. “And she’ll have to see me then.” And he took a seat near the foot of the stairs, more firmly determined than ever that the girl should not give him the slip again a second time. “He’s here,” he thought. “He’s not a mile from me, I’ll stake my soul on it! And before Thursday it’s odds she’ll need to see him, and I’ll nab them!” And he began to think out various ways of giving her something which she would wish to communicate.
Meanwhile Henrietta, seated at her window in the south gable, gazed dolefully out; on the grey expanse of water, which she was beginning to hate, on the lofty serrated ridge, which must ever recall humiliating memories, on the snow-clad peaks that symbolised the loneliness of her life. She would not weep, but her lip quivered. And oh, she thought, it was a cruel punishment for that which she had done. In the present she was utterly alone: in the future it would be no better. And yet if that were all, if loneliness were all, she could bear it. She could make up her mind to it. But if not today, to-morrow, and if not to-morrow, the day after, the man would be taken. And then she would have to stand forth and tell her shameful tale, and all the world, her world, would learn with derision what a fool she had been, for what a creature she had been ready to give up all, what dross that was which she had taken for gold! And that which had been romantic would be ridiculous.
Beside this aching dread the insult which Captain Clyne had put upon her lost some of its sting. Yet it smarted at times and rankled, driving her into passing rages. She had wronged him, yet, strange to say, she hated to think that she had lost his esteem. And perhaps for this reason, perhaps because he had shown himself less inhuman at the outset than her family, his treatment hurt her to a point she had not anticipated, nor could understand.
The one drop of comfort in her cup sprang from a source as unlikely as the rock which Moses struck. It came from the flinty bosom of Mrs. Gilson. Not that the landlady was outwardly kind; but she was brusquely and gruffly inattentive, trusting the girl and leaving her to herself. And in secret Henrietta appreciated this. She began to feel a dependence on the woman whom she had once dubbed an odious and a hateful thing. She read kindness between the lines of her harsh visage, and solicitude in the eye that scorned to notice her. She ceased to tremble when the voice which flung panic through the Low Wood came girding up the stairs. And though no word of acknowledgement passed her lips, she was conscious that in other and smoother hands she might have fared worse.
The open sympathy of Modest Ann was less welcome. It was even a terrible plague at times. For the waiting-maid never came into the girl’s presence without full eyes and a sigh, never looked at her save as the kind-hearted look at lambs that are faring to the butcher, never left her without a gesture that challenged Heaven’s pity. Ann, indeed, saw in the young lady the martyr of love. She viewed her as a sharer in her own misfortunes; and though she was forty and the girl nineteen, she found in her echoes of her own heart-throbs. There was humour in this, and, for some, a touch of the pathetic; but not for Henrietta, who had a strong sense of the ridiculous and no liking for pity. In her ordinary spirits she would have either laughed at the woman or rated her. Depressed as she was, she bore with her none too well.
Yet Ann was honestly devoted to her heroine, and continually dreamed of some romantic service—such as the waiting-maid in a chap-book performs for her mistress. Given the occasion, she would have risen to it, and would have cut off her hand before she betrayed the girl’s secrets. But her buxom form and square, stolid face did not commend her; they were at odds with romance. And Henrietta did not more than suffer her, until the afternoon of this day, when it seemed to the girl that she could suffer her no longer.