But these distressing thoughts did not continue long. Mr. Northcott happened that evening to say a great deal about kindness and its effects in his sermon; and Mrs. Churton, while she listened, again and again recalled those words which her daughter had spoken, and which had seemed so wild and unjust—“All the unkindness and the enmity, open and secret, has been on your side.” Had she in her inconsiderate zeal given any reason for such a charge? For if Constance really believed such a thing it would account for her excessive bitterness. Then she remembered how Fan had been mysteriously won over to her own side; to herself the girl's action had seemed mysterious, but doubtless it had not seemed so to Constance; she had set it down to her mother's secret enmity; and though that reproach had been undeserved, it was not strange that she had made it.
In the evening when Miss Churton, who had recovered her placid manner, said good-night and left the room, her mother rose and followed her out, and called softly to her.
Constance came slowly down the stairs, looking a little surprised.
“Constance, forgive me if I have been unkind to you,” said the mother, with trembling voice.
“Yes, mother; and forgive me if I said too much this evening—I did say too much.”
“I have already forgiven you,” returned her mother; and then for a few moments they remained standing together without speaking.
“Good-night, mother,” said Constance at length, and offering her hand.
Her mother took it, and after a moment's hesitation drew the girl to her and kissed her, after which they silently separated.
That mutual forgiveness and kiss signified that they were now both willing to lay aside their vain dissensions, but nothing more. That it would mark the beginning of a closer union and confidence between them was not for a moment imagined. Mrs. Churton had been disturbed in her mind; her conscience accused her of indiscretion, which had probably given rise to painful suspicions; she could not do less than ask her enemy's forgiveness. Constance, on her side, was ready to meet any advance, since she only desired to be left in possession of the somewhat melancholy peace her solitary life afforded her.
Meanwhile Fan was happily ignorant of the storm her coming to the house had raised, and that these two ladies, both so dear to her, one loved openly and the other secretly, had been fighting for her possession, and that the battle was lost and won, one taking her as a lawful prize, while the other had retired, defeated, but calmly, without complaint. Her new life and surroundings—the noiseless uneventful days, each with its little cares and occupations, and simple natural pleasures, the world of verdure and melody of birds and wide expanse of sky—seemed strangely in harmony with her spirit: it soon became familiar as if she had been born to it; the town life, the streets she had known from infancy, had never seemed so familiar, so closely joined to her life. And as the days and weeks and months went by, her London life, when she recalled it, began to seem immeasurably remote in time, or else unreal, like a dream or a story heard long ago; and the people she had known were like imaginary people. Only Mary seemed real and not remote—a link connecting that old and shadowy past with the vivid living present.