"If it pleases my Master;—but I think not."
"Do you consider yourself so seriously ill, Mr. Rhys?" said Eleanor looking shocked.
"Do not take it so seriously," said he smiling at her. "No harm can come to me any way. It is far worse than death for me, to be cut off from doing my work; and a while ago the thought of this troubled me; it gave me some dark hours. But at last I rested myself on that word, 'Why art thou cast down, O my soul? Hope thou in God!' and now I am content about it. Life or death—neither can bring but good to me; for my Father sends it. You know," he said, again with a smile at her, but with a keen observant eye,—"they who are the Lord's wear an invisible casque, which preserves them from all fear."
He saw that Eleanor's face was grave and troubled; he saw that at this last word there was a sort of avoidance of feature, as if it reached a spot of feeling somewhere that was sensitive. He added nothing more, except the friendly grasp of the hand, which drove the weapon home.
The rain had ceased; the sun was out; and the two girls set forward on their return. They hurried at first, for the afternoon had worn away. The rain drops lay thick and sparkling on every blade of grass, and dripped upon them from the trees.
"Now you will get your feet wet again," said Julia; "and then you will have another sickness; and Mr. Carlisle will be angry."
"Do let Mr. Carlisle's anger alone!" said Eleanor. "I shall not sit down in wet shoes, so I shall not get hurt. Did you ever see him angry?"
"No," said Julia; "and I am glad he won't be angry with me?"
In spite of her words, the wet grass gave Eleanor a disagreeable reminder of what wet grass had done for her some months before. The remembrance of her sickness came up with the immediate possibility of its returning again; the little feeling of danger and exposure gave power to the things she had just heard. She could not banish them; she recalled freshly the miserable fear and longing of those days when she lay ill and knew not how her illness would turn; the fearful want of a shelter; the comparative littleness of all things under the sun. Rythdale Priory had not been worth a feather in that day; all the gay pleasures and hopes of the summer could have found no entrance into her heart then. And as she was then, so Eleanor knew herself now—defenceless, if danger came. And the wet grass into which every footstep plunged said that danger might be at any time very near. Eleanor wished bitterly that she had not come this walk with Julia. It was strange, how utterly shaken, miserable, forlorn, her innermost spirit felt, at this possible approach of evil to her shelterless head. And with double force, though they had been forcible at the time, Mr. Rhys's words recurred to her—the words that he had spoken half to himself as it were—"Hope thou in God." Eleanor had heard those words, read by different lips, at different times; they were not new; but the meaning of them had never struck her before. Now for the first time, as she heard the low, sweet, confident utterance of a soul fleeing to its stronghold, of a spirit absolutely secure there, she had an idea of what "hope in God" meant; and every time she remembered the tones of those words, spoken by failing lips too, it gave a blow to her heart. There was something she wanted. What else could be precious like that? And with them belonged in this instance, Eleanor felt, a purity of character till now unimagined. Thoughts and footsteps hurrying along together, they were past the village and far on their way towards home, the two sisters, before much was said between them.
"I wish Mr. Rhys would get well and stay here," said Julia. "It is nice to go to see him, isn't it, Eleanor? He is so good."