"No, of course she isn't," Muriel answered irritably. How could she die, now that everything had just been put right? Of course she wasn't going to die!
He twisted the smooth knob at the top of the staircase. "She mustn't die," he whispered again. "I couldn't stand that, I tell you I couldn't." He cast a sidelong glance down stairs towards the passage where the door of the front parlour stood open. "Father says that it'll be the judgment of God upon our wickedness if she does die."
"What does he know about it? She won't die."
"I can't bear it," he repeated, his mouth agape, his eyes that nature had intended to be meek and kind staring ahead with a sad, unnatural concentration. "I couldn't abide to think of her dying in her sin."
"You don't think that at all. She's not in sin—any more than I am. You're talking nonsense. She's going to get well. And in April your baby will be born. And Mr. Todd will let you both go off to Fallowdale." She nodded at him reassuringly, as one nods to a child, and then went upon her quiet, mouse-like duties.
Three more days passed. A nurse had come from Hardrascliffe. Mrs. Hammond sat up half the night, and Muriel the other half. Mrs. Hammond wore a white apron over her pretty dresses. Her cool fingers had been denuded of their rings, but their little pink nails shone like jewels. The farm girls all had lost their heads and hearts to her. They wondered how on earth a dowdy little thing like Muriel, and a big jolly girl like Connie, could have had such a duck of a mother. Mrs. Todd treated her with cheerful and unimpressionable independence. Muriel followed her submissively, like a scolded child, knowing herself to be in disgrace, and yet never hearing a word of the reproach that she knew her mother felt.
Connie, she found inarticulate and pathetic, only occasionally cross and difficult. Most of the time she seemed to be uncannily obedient.
Once in the early morning, when Muriel was so sleepy that she had to hold her head right forward, so that it would not fall back against her chair, Connie's queer, grating whisper roused her.
"Mu——"
"Yes."