Thus speaking he turned his eyes towards the ground again and fell into a deep reverie.
While this conversation had been passing, Emily had sunk upon her knees, trembling in every limb, and hid her face in the coverings of the bed. To her, Lady Hastings now turned. Whether it was that remorse and some degree of shame affected her, when she saw the terrible agitation of her child, I cannot tell, but she paused for a moment as if in hesitation.
She spoke at length, saying "Emily, my child, to you I must appeal, as your father is so obdurate."
Emily made no answer, however, but remained weeping, and Lady Hastings becoming somewhat irritated, went on in a sharper tone. "What! will not my own child listen to the voice of a dying mother?" she asked rather petulantly than sorrowfully, although she tried hard to make her tone gravely reproachful; "will she not pay any attention to her mother's last request?
"Oh, my mother," answered Emily, raising her head, and speaking more vehemently than was customary with her, "ask me any thing that is just; ask me any thing that is reasonable; but do not ask me to do what is wrong and what is unjust. I have made a promise—do not ask me to break it. There is no circumstance changed which could give even an excuse for such a breach of faith. Marlow has only shown himself more true, more faithful, more sincere. Should I be more false, more faithless, more ungenerous than he thought me? Oh no! it is impossible—quite impossible," and she hid her streaming eyes in the bed-clothes again, clasping her hands tightly together over her forehead.
Her father, with his arms crossed upon his chest, had kept his eyes fixed upon her while she spoke with a look of doubt and inquiry. Well might he doubt—well might he doubt his own suspicions. There was a truth, a candor, a straightforwardness, in that glowing face which gave the contradiction, plain and clear, to every foul, dishonest charge which had been fabricated against his child. It was impossible in fact that she could have so spoken and so looked, unless she had so felt. The best actress that ever lived could not have performed that part. There would have been something too much or too little, something approaching the exaggerated or the tame. With Emily there was nothing. What she said seemed but the sudden outburst of her heart, pressed for a reply; and as soon as it was spoken she sunk down again in silence, weeping bitterly under the conflict of two strong but equally amiable feelings.
For a moment the sight seemed to rouse Sir Philip Hastings. "She should not, if she would," he said; "voluntarily, and knowing what she did, she consented to the promise I have made, and she neither can nor shall retract. To Marlow, indeed, I may have a few words to say, and he shall once more have the opportunity of acting as he pleases; but Emily is bound as well as myself, and by that bond we must abide."
"What have you to say to Marlow?" asked Lady Hastings in a tone of commonplace curiosity, which did not at all indicate a sense of that terrible situation in which she assumed she was placed.
"That matters not," answered Sir Philip. "It will rest between him and me at his return. How he may act I know not—what he may think I know not; but he shall be a partaker of my thoughts and the master of his own actions. Do not let us pursue this painful subject further. If you feel yourself ill, my love, let us send for further medical help. I do hope and believe that you are not so ill as you imagine; but if you are so there is more need that the physician should be here, and that we should quit topics too painful for discussion, where discussion is altogether useless."
"Well, then, mark me," said Lady Hastings with an air of assumed melancholy dignity, which being quite unnatural to her, bordered somewhat on the burlesque; "mark me, Philip—mark me, Emily! your wife, your mother, makes it her last dying request—her last dying injunction, that you break off this marriage. You may or you may not give me the consolation on this sick bed of knowing that my request will be complied with; but I do not think that either of you will be careless, will be remorseless enough to carry out this engagement after I am gone. I will not threaten, Emily—I will not even attempt to take away from you the wealth for which this young man doubtless seeks you—I will not attempt to deter you by bequeathing you my curse if you do not comply with my injunctions; but I tell you, if you do not make me this promise before I die, you have embittered your mother's last moments, and—"