“Her recovery, grandmother!—is she ill?”
“She looks well—does she not? Well, she is consuming of a cancer. She has been hoping that a surgical operation might relieve her, until last June, when the result of ‘a consultation’ was announced to her, that at her advanced age it would probably be fatal. Her resolution was taken. She insisted on knowing the probable length of her life, if the disease took its course, and then forbade any allusion to it hereafter. Her own sisters, who are in the house, do not know it. She is as cheerful and as gay as ever. ‘Let no tears be shed for me while I live,’ she said, ‘mine are sorrows which would only be doubled by sharing them.’ ”
“That was noble!” exclaimed Alice. “Oh, how cruel, how unjust I was to her! and in the very point where she most deserves praise; for I own to you, her interest in all about her, struck me as particularly frivolous and unworthy in a woman of her age.” And Alice, in her generous haste to atone for her injustice, was in some danger of falling in love with what was, in truth, the exceptionable manner of Mrs. Ellicott.
“She is like Lady Delacour, Alice,” said Louisa, “don’t you remember, in Belinda?”
“As like as most facts are to fancies,” said Madam Stanwood, “Mrs. Ellicott, destitute of all Lady Delacour’s grace and fascination, has a simple, and almost sturdy moral strength, which gives dignity to an otherwise uninteresting character. She is not acting for point or effect at all, but expressing simply a disinterestedness and regard for others, which, under the circumstances, I own, inspires me with more respect than most martyrdoms.”
“There is the door bell!” exclaimed Louisa, “now, Alice, let us study characters, instead of talking nonsense.”
The gay Mrs. Lewis was not the counterpart of the gay Mrs. Ellicott, but the young girls looked wistfully at her, as if they, for the first time, felt the possibility that, “seeing, they might not see nor understand.” The smile and the voice, though cordial, seemed not heartfelt. For the first time they missed a sincerity, a truthfulness in the tones about them; and they silently listened, with watchful eyes, while their grandmother talked on with their visiter.
When she, too, had gone, and the gay laugh, and “good morning!” had died in the quiet room, Louisa broke silence.
“Dear me, grandmother! I feel as if I were treading on a volcano! I shan’t dare to step on the surface of society for fear of breaking in upon burning lava somewhere! I declare, this notion of people having two natures is very terrible—it quite takes away my composure.”
“And yet you have two, Louisa.”