As for the two who were shut up together in Mrs. Mortimer’s parlour, their state of mind was far from partaking of the virtuous peace and serenity which filled Miss Marjoribanks’s bosom. It was more than an hour before the Archdeacon went away; and when Mrs. Mortimer had a little collected her faculties, the result arrived which had been foreseen by Lucilla. In the first place, terror seized the widow as to what had become of her pupils, whom all this time she had forgotten, and deep was her gratitude when she had ascertained that her protecting genius had sent them away. But with that gratitude came a sudden recollection of the manner in which Mr. Beverley and Miss Marjoribanks had been coming together up the garden path, before the mistress of the house showed herself. Mrs. Mortimer wrung her hands when she recollected the looks and attitude of the two, and the rumour which had reached her ears that the Archdeacon was paying attention to Miss Marjoribanks. What was she to do?—was her miserable presence here to dispel perhaps the youthful hopes of her benefactress, and make a revolution in Lucilla’s prospects? The poor woman felt herself ready to sink into the earth at the thought. She went to the window and looked out disconsolately into the rain—for it had come on to rain, as Lucilla supposed it would—and felt like a creature in a cage, helpless, imprisoned, miserable, not knowing what to do with herself, and the cause of trouble to her best friends. A little house in a garden may look like a little paradise in the sunshine, and yet feel like a dungeon when a poor woman all alone looks out across her flowers in the rain, and sees nothing but the wall that shuts her in, and thinks to herself that she has no refuge nor escape from it—nobody to tell her what to do, nothing but her own feeble powers to support her, and the dreadful idea that she has done harm and can do no good to her only protector. Any reasonable creature would have said, that to be there in her own house, poor enough certainly, but secure, and no longer driven lonely and distressed about the world, was a great matter. But yet, after all, the walls that shut her in, the blast of white, sweeping, downright rain, which seemed to cut her off from any succour outside, and the burden of something on her mind which by herself she was quite unable to bear, was a hard combination; and wringing one’s hands, and feeling one’s mind ready to give way under a new and unexpected burden, could not advance matters in the slightest degree. She was not strong-minded, as has been already proved; nor, indeed, had she the ordinary amount of indifference to other people, or confidence in herself, which stands in the place of self-control with many people. After she had wrung her hands, and looked out again and again with a vague instinct of perhaps finding some suggestion of comfort outside, Mrs. Mortimer relapsed by necessity into the one idea that had been a support to her for so many months past. All that she could do was to consult Lucilla—it might be to wound Lucilla, for anything she could tell; but when a poor creature is helpless and weak, and has but one friend in the world who is strong, what can she do but apply to her sustainer and guardian? When, after beating about wildly from one point to another, she arrived ultimately, as might have been predicted, and as Miss Marjoribanks had expected from the first, at that conclusion, there remained a further difficulty in respect to the means of communication. Lucilla had settled quite calmly in her own mind that it would be by the medium of a three-cornered note, a matter in which there was no difficulty whatever, for the widow was sufficiently fluent with her pen; but then Lucilla had not thought of Mary Jane, who was the only possible messenger. It was to this point now that Mrs. Mortimer’s ideas addressed themselves. At that moment the rain poured down fiercer than ever, the bricks of the uncovered wall grew black with the wet, and the wistaria crouched and shivered about the porch as if it wanted to be taken indoors. And then to get wet, and perhaps catch cold, was a thing Mary Jane conscientiously avoided, like the rest of the world; and it was with a sense of alarm even stronger than that excited by the possibility of injuring Lucilla, that Mrs. Mortimer very gently and modestly rang her bell.
“I don’t think it rains quite so heavily,” said the timid experimentalist, feeling her heart beat as she made this doubtful statement. “Have you a pair of goloshes, Mary Jane?”
“No,” said the little handmaiden, with precaution; “and, please, if it’s for the post, it rains worse nor ever; and I don’t think as mother would like—”
“Oh, it is not for the post,” said Mrs. Mortimer; “it is for Miss Marjoribanks. You can take mine, and then you will not get your feet wet. I go out so very little; you may have them—to keep—Mary Jane. And you can take the big shawl that hangs in the passage, and an umbrella. I don’t think it is so heavy as it was.”
Mary Jane regarded the rain gloomily from the window; but her reluctance was at an end from the moment she heard that it was to Miss Marjoribanks she was going. To be sure, the distance between the
