would be spared the sight. She was growing jealous of his love for Alured and of us, and had a fierce glad hope of getting him more to herself.
And then! oh! poor Hester!
No wonder her desire was to be
Anywhere, anywhere, Out of the world.
But out of all the anguish, the remorse, the despair, repentance grew at last. Love seemed to open the heart to it. The sense of infinite redeeming love penetrated at last, and trust in pardon, and with pardon came peace. Peace grew on her, through increasing self- condemnation, and bearing her up as the bodily powers failed more and more.
There is little more to say. She was a dear and precious charge to us, and as she grew weaker, she also became more cheerful! and even that terrible, broken-hearted sense of bereavement calmed.
She found out about Jaquetta and Arthur, and took great interest in his arrangements for getting a partnership at Shinglebay.
'And Hester,' said Jaquetta, 'it is so lucky for me that I came down from being a fine lady. I might never have known Arthur; and if I had, what an absurd creature I should have been as a poor man's wife!'
As to the Deerhursts, the mother sent a servant once or twice to inquire, but never came herself to see her dear friend; and Miss Prior took care to tell us that there were horrid whispers about, that Hester had known, and if not, Mrs. Deerhurst could not have on her visiting list the wife of a man with a warrant out against him! She thought it very unfeeling in us to harbour her.
But Emily came. Hester had a great longing to thank her for checking her on that walk to the scarlet-fever place, and asked Jaquetta one day to write to her and beg her to come to see a dying woman.
Emily showed the note to her mother, and did not ask leave. The white doe had become a much more valiant animal.
Hester had liked Emily even while Emily shrank from her, and she now realized what she had inflicted upon her and Fulk.
She asked Emily's pardon for it, as she had asked Fulk's, and said that when she was gone she hoped all would come right. Of course the old position could not be restored, but she knew now why Joel Lea had such an instinct against it.
'I feel,' she once said, 'as if Satan had offered me all this for my soul, and I had taken the bargain. Aye, and if God's providence had allowed our wicked purpose, he would have had it too. My husband! he prayed for me! and my boy did too.'
She always called Joel Lea 'my husband' now, and thought and talked much of their early love and his warnings. I think the way she had saddened his later years grieved her as much as anything, and all her affection seemed revived.
She lingered on, never leaving the house indeed, but not much worse, till the year had come round again, and we loved her more each day we nursed her. And when the end came suddenly at last, we mourned as for a dear sister.
Perrault wrote once-a threatening, swaggering letter from America, demanding hush-money. It did not come till she was too ill to open it-only in the last week before her death, and it was left till we settled her affairs.
Then Fulk wrote and told him of the verdict against him, and recommended him to let himself be heard of no more. And he took the advice.
We found that dear Hester had left all the fortune, 30,000 pounds, which had been settled on herself and Trevor, to be divided equally between us three. Nor had we any scruple in profiting by it.
Trevorsham had enough, and it was what my father would have given us if he could.
It was enough to make Jaquetta and her young Dr. Cradock settle down happily and prosperously on the practice they bought.
And enough too, together with Emily's strong quiet determination, to make Mrs. Deerhurst withdraw her opposition. Daughters of twenty- nine years old may get their own way.
Moreover a drawing-room and dining-room were built on to Skimping's Lawn, though Alured declares they have spoilt the place, and nothing ever was so jolly as the keeping-room.
We had a beautiful double wedding in the summer, in our old church, and since that I have come to make the old Hall homelike to my boy in the holidays.
We are very happy together when he comes home, and fills the house with his young friends; and if it feels too large and empty for me in his absence, I can always walk down for a happy afternoon with Emily, or go and make a longer visit to Jaquetta.
And I don't think, as a leader of the fashion, she would have been half so happy as the motherly, active, ready-handed doctor's wife.
But best of all to me, are those quiet moments when Alured's earnest spirit shows itself, and he talks out what is in his heart; that it is a great responsibility to stand in the place such a man as Fulk would have had-yes-and to have been saved at the cost of Trevor's life.
I believe the pure, calm remembrance of Trevor Lea's life will be his guiding star, and that he will be worthy of it.
