“I wonder that you should ask.”
“He is not here.”
“But he may come.”
“If he came ever so I would not see him if you bade me not. I think you hardly understand me, aunt. I will obey you in everything. I am sure you will not now ask me to marry Mr. Morrison.”
She could not say that Philip would be more likely to become amenable and marry the Cornish heiress if Bessy were away at Avranches than if she still remained shut up at Launay. But that was her feeling. Philip, she knew, would be less obedient than Bessy. But then, too, Philip might be less obstinate of purpose. “You cannot live here, Bessy, unless you will say that you will never become the wife of my son.”
“Never?”
“Never!”
“I cannot say that.” There was a long pause before she found the courage to pronounce these words, but she did pronounce them at last.
“Then you must go.”
“I may stay and nurse you till you are well. Let me do that. I will go whenever you may bid me.”
“No. There shall be no terms between us. We must be friends, Bessy, or we must be enemies. We cannot be friends as long as you hold yourself to be engaged to Philip Launay. While that is so I will not take a cup of water from your hands. No, no,” for the girl was again trying to embrace her. “I will not have your love, nor shall you have mine.”
“My heart would break were I to say it.”
“Then let it break! Is my heart not broken? What is it though our hearts do break—what is it though we die—if we do our duty? You owe this for what I have done for you.”
“I owe you everything.”
“Then say that you will give him up.”
“I owe you everything, except this. I will not speak to him, I will not write to him, I will not even look at him, but I will not give him up. When one loves, one cannot give it up.” Then she was ordered to go back to her room, and back to her room she went.
VII
How Bessy Pryor Was Banished to Normandy
There was nothing for it but to go, after the interview described in the last chapter. Mrs. Miles sent a message to the obstinate girl, informing her that she need not any longer consider herself as a prisoner, but that she had better prepare her clothes so as to be ready to start within a week. The necessary correspondence had taken place between Launay and Avranches, and within ten days from the time at which Mr. Gregory had made the proposition—in less than a fortnight from the departure of her lover—Bessy came down from her room all equipped, and took her place in the same wagonette which so short a time before had taken her lover away from her. During the week she had had liberty to go where she pleased, except into her aunt’s room. But she had, in truth, been almost as much a prisoner as before. She did for a few minutes each day go out into the garden, but she would not go beyond the garden into the park, nor did she accept an invitation from the Gregory girls to spend an evening at the rectory. It would be so necessary, one of them wrote, that everything should be told to her as to the disposition and ways of life of Aunt Amelia! But Bessy would not see the Gregory girls. She was being sent away from home because of the wickedness of her love, and all Launay knew it. In such a condition of things she could not go out to eat sally-lunn and pound-cake, and to be told of the delights of a small Norman town. She would not even see the Gregory girls when they came up to the house, but wrote an affectionate note to the elder of them explaining that her misery was too great to allow her to see any friend.
She was in truth very miserable. It was not only because of her love, from which she had from the first been aware that misery must come—undoubted misery, if not misery that would last through her whole life. But now there was added to this the sorrow of absolute banishment from her aunt. Mrs. Miles would not see her again before she started. Bessy was well aware of all that she owed to the mistress of Launay; and, being intelligent in the reading of character, was aware also that through many years she had succeeded in obtaining from the old woman more than the intended performance of an undertaken duty. She had forced the old woman to love her, and was aware that by means of that love the old woman’s life had been brightened. She had not only received, but had conferred kindness—and it is by conferring kindness that love is created. It was an agony to her that she should be compelled to leave this dearest friend, who was still sick and infirm, without seeing her. But Mrs. Miles was inexorable. These four words written on a scrap of paper were brought to her on that morning:—“Pray, pray, see me!” She was still inexorable. There had been long pencil-written notes between
