They two had sat still under the shade of a thorn bush, looking at Nora as she was wandering about, and talking together more freely than they had ever done before on the circumstances that had brought them together. “How pretty she looks,” Priscilla had said, as Nora was standing with her figure clearly marked by the light.
“Yes; she is very pretty, and has been much admired. This terrible affair of mine is a cruel blow to her.”
“You mean that it is bad for her to come and live here—without society.”
“Not exactly that—though of course it would be better for her to go out. And I don’t know how a girl is ever to get settled in the world unless she goes out. But it is always an injury to be connected in any way with a woman who is separated from her husband. It must be bad for you.”
“It won’t hurt me,” said Priscilla. “Nothing of that kind can hurt me.”
“I mean that people say such ill-natured things.”
“I stand alone, and can take care of myself,” said Priscilla. “I defy the evil tongues of all the world to hurt me. My personal cares are limited to an old gown and bread and cheese. I like a pair of gloves to go to church with, but that is only the remnant of a prejudice. The world has so very little to give me, that I am pretty nearly sure that it will take nothing away.”
“And you are contented?”
“Well, no; I can’t say that I am contented. I hardly think that anybody ought to be contented. Should my mother die and Dorothy remain with my aunt, or get married, I should be utterly alone in the world. Providence, or whatever you call it, has made me a lady after a fashion, so that I can’t live with the ploughmen’s wives, and at the same time has so used me in other respects, that I can’t live with anybody else.”
“Why should not you get married, as well as Dorothy?”
“Who would have me? And if I had a husband I should want a good one—a man with a head on his shoulders, and a heart. Even if I were young and good-looking, or rich, I doubt whether I could please myself. As it is I am as likely to be taken bodily to heaven, as to become any man’s wife.”
“I suppose most women think so of themselves at some time, and yet they are married.”
“I am not fit to marry. I am often cross, and I like my own way, and I have a distaste for men. I never in my life saw a man whom I wished even to make my intimate friend. I should think any man an idiot who began to make soft speeches to me, and I should tell him so.”
“Ah; you might find it different when he went on with it.”
“But I think,” said Priscilla, “that when a woman is married there is nothing to which she should not submit on behalf of her husband.”
“You mean that for me.”
“Of course I mean it for you. How should I not be thinking of you, living as you are under the same roof with us? And I am thinking of Louey.” Louey was the baby. “What are you to do when after a year or two his father shall send for him to have him under his own care?”
“Nothing shall separate me from my child,” said Mrs. Trevelyan eagerly.
“That is easily said; but I suppose the power of doing as he pleased would be with him.”
“Why should it be with him? I do not at all know that it would be with him. I have not left his house. It is he that has turned me out.”
“There can, I think, be very little doubt what you should do,” said Priscilla, after a pause, during which she had got up from her seat under the thorn bush.
“What should I do?” asked Mrs. Trevelyan.
“Go back to him.”
“I will tomorrow if he will write and ask me. Nay; how could I help myself? I am his creature, and must go or come as he bids me. I am
