“He told me today that you were the best of women. Those were his very words.”
“Were they, my dear? I am glad at least that he should say so to you. He has been better since you came;—a great deal better. For one day I was frightened; but I am sorry now that I sent for you.”
“I am so glad, mamma; so very glad.”
“You were happy there—and comfortable. And if they were glad to have you, why should I have brought you away?”
“But I was not happy;—even though they were very good to me. How could I be happy there when I was thinking of you and papa and Jane here at home? Whatever there is here, I would sooner share it with you than be anywhere else—while this trouble lasts.”
“My darling!—it is a great comfort to see you again.”
“Only that I knew that one less in the house would be a saving to you I should not have gone. When there is unhappiness, people should stay together;—shouldn’t they, mamma?” They were sitting quite close to each other, on an old sofa in a small upstairs room, from which a door opened into the larger chamber in which Mr. Crawley was lying. It had been arranged between them that on this night Mrs. Crawley should remain with her husband, and that Grace should go to her bed. It was now past one o’clock, but she was still there, clinging to her mother’s side, with her mother’s arm drawn round her. “Mamma,” she said, when they had both been silent for some ten minutes, “I have got something to tell you.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes, mamma; tonight, if you will let me.”
“But you promised that you would go to bed. You were up all last night.”
“I am not sleepy, mamma.”
“Of course you shall tell me what you please, dearest. Is it a secret? Is it something I am not to repeat?”
“You must say how that ought to be, mamma. I shall not tell it to anyone else.”
“Well, dear?”
“Sit comfortably, mamma;—there; like that, and let me have your hand. It’s a terrible story to have to tell.”
“A terrible story, Grace?”
“I mean that you must not draw away from me. I shall want to feel that you are quite close to me. Mamma, while I was at Allington, Major Grantly came there.”
“Did he, my dear?”
“Yes, mamma.”
“Did he know them before?”
“No, mamma; not at the Small House. But he came there—to see me. He asked me—to be his wife. Don’t move, mamma.”
“My darling child! I won’t move, dearest. Well; and what did you say to him? God bless him, at any rate. May God bless him, because he has seen with a true eye, and felt with a noble instinct. It is something, Grace, to have been wooed by such a man at such a time.”
“Mamma, it did make me feel proud; it did.”
“You had known him well before—of course? I knew that you and he were friends, Grace.”
“Yes, we were friends. I always liked him. I used not to know what to think about him. Miss Anne Prettyman told me that it would be so; and once before I thought so myself.”
“And had you made up your mind what to say to him?”
“Yes, I had then. But I did not say it.”
“Did not say what you had made up your mind to say?”
“That was before all this had happened to papa.”
“I understand you, dearest.”
“When Miss Anne Prettyman told me that I should be ready with my answer, and when I saw that Miss Prettyman herself used to let him come to the house and seemed to wish that I should see him when he came, and when he once was—so very gentle and kind, and when he said that he wanted me to love Edith—Oh, mamma!”
“Yes, darling, I know. Of course you loved him.”
“Yes, mamma. And I do love him. How could one not love him?”
“I love him—for loving you.”
“But, mamma, one is bound not to do a harm to anyone that one loves. So when he came to Allington I told him that I could not be his wife.”
“Did you, my dear?”
“Yes; I did. Was I not right? Ought I to go to him to bring a disgrace upon all the family, just because he is so good that he asks me? Shall I injure him because he wants to do me a service?”
“If he loves you, Grace, the service he will require will be your love in return.”
“That is all very well, mamma—in books; but I do not believe it in reality. Being in love is very nice, and in poetry they make it out to be everything. But I do not think I should make Major Grantly happy if when I became his wife his own father and mother would not see him. I know I should be so wretched, myself, that I could not live.”
“But would it be so?”
“Yes;—I think it would. And the archdeacon is very rich, and can leave all his money away from Major Grantly if he pleases. Think what I should feel if I were the cause of Edith losing her fortune!”
“But why do you suppose these terrible things?”
“I have a reason for supposing them. This must be a secret. Miss Anne Prettyman wrote to me.”
“I wish Miss Anne Prettyman’s hand had been in the fire.”
“No, mamma; no; she was right. Would not I have wished, do you think, to have learned all the truth about the matter before I answered him? Besides, it made no difference. I could have made no other answer while papa is under such a terrible ban. It is no time for us to think of being in love. We have got to love each other. Isn’t it so, mamma?” The mother did not answer in words, but slipping down on her knees before her child threw her arms
