Emily looked at him in alarm. He went on without appearing to notice that he had startled her. “I wish to God I could as easily put a stop to the mad project which you are contemplating.”
“The mad project?” Emily repeated. “Oh, Doctor Allday. Do you cruelly leave me to myself, at the time of all others, when I am most in need of your sympathy?”
That appeal moved him. He spoke more gently; he pitied, while he condemned her.
“My poor dear child, I should be cruel indeed, if I encouraged you. You are giving yourself up to an enterprise, so shockingly unsuited to a young girl like you, that I declare I contemplate it with horror. Think, I entreat you, think; and let me hear that you have yielded—not to my poor entreaties—but to your own better sense!” His voice faltered; his eyes moistened. “I shall make a fool of myself,” he burst out furiously, “if I stay here any longer. Good-by.”
He left her.
She walked to the window, and looked out at the fair morning. No one to feel for her—no one to understand her—nothing nearer that could speak to poor mortality of hope and encouragement than the bright heaven, so far away! She turned from the window. “The sun shines on the murderer,” she thought, “as it shines on me.”
She sat down at the table, and tried to quiet her mind; to think steadily to some good purpose. Of the few friends that she possessed, every one had declared that she was in the wrong. Had they lost the one loved being of all beings on earth, and lost him by the hand of a homicide—and that homicide free? All that was faithful, all that was devoted in the girl’s nature, held her to her desperate resolution as with a hand of iron. If she shrank at that miserable moment, it was not from her design—it was from the sense of her own helplessness. “Oh, if I had been a man!” she said to herself. “Oh, if I could find a friend!”
CHAPTER LIII. THE FRIEND IS FOUND.
Mrs. Ellmother looked into the parlor. “I told you Mr. Mirabel would call again,” she announced. “Here he is.”