The mother waited a moment before she said, perhaps with that insensibility to others’ nerves which years often bring, “I was afraid the boy might have got to caring about her. Do you think he had?”
“Yes, I think he had,” replied Rachel, abruptly, as if the words had been wrenched from her.
Once more the mother waited before she spoke. She had never talked gossip with her children, and perhaps she was now reconciling to her conscience the appearance of gossip in what she had to say. “I always thought,” she began, “that they were both as fine young men as I almost ever saw. I never saw more of a friend than the other one was to this one. Do you think she was much sorry for what she did to part them?”
“Yes, I think she was. She did more than she meant, and I don’t know as we ought to be made to answer for more harm than we mean.”
“No,” said Mrs. Woodward. “At least it isn’t for us to say, here. Did you like her as well at the last as you used to?”
“Yes, I liked her,” answered Rachel. “Nobody could help that. She was very unhappy, and I never had any call to feel hard against her—on my own account.”
“I don’t know as I ever knew a person quite like her,” mused Mrs. Woodward. “I don’t know as I should ever rightly understand her, and I won’t judge her, for one; she’ll find plenty to do that. I don’t believe but what her feelings were led away for a while by the other one, and I don’t see as they ever rightly came back to this one, even supposing that she ever did care much for him.”
“Oh, mother, mother, mother!” the girl broke out, and cast herself into a chair, and hid her face on the bed.
A distress passed over the stony composure of the elder woman’s face, but she sat quiet, and did not go near her child or touch her. What comfort her children got from her went from heart to heart, or rather from conscience to conscience, without open demonstration; she hid her natural affections as if they were sins, but they ruled her in secret, and doubtless now her heart bled with the pity her arms withheld. She did not move from her place, and while the girl sobbed out the secret of a love which she had never yet owned to herself, the mother did not show by any sign or change of countenance that the revelation either surprised or shocked her. She may indeed have always suspected it, but however that was, she now accepted the fact as she would any calamity, in silence, and whatever inward trouble it gave her did not appear even to the solitude in which Rachel’s hidden face left her. She waited patiently, but when at last the girl lifted her face and sat with her head thrown back and her eyelids fallen, the mother still did not speak; she left her to deal with her pain alone, as was best. But that evening she came to Rachel’s chamber with her lamp in her hand, and took her place near her where she lay listless in her rocking-chair.
“Before Mrs. Gilbert went away,” the mother abruptly began, “she came and had a little talk with me about you, Rachel. I never told you, and I don’t know as I ever should.”