Mrs. John’s eyes filled with tears. She could not get to the end of a long speech like this without crying; and she was so anxious, that they found their way also into her voice.
“Mother!” cried Hester, opening wide her eyes. They were very bright and clear, and when they opened widely looked almost unnatural in their size. She was all the more startled that she had never been subject to any such representation before. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “What should we do with the White House? I think it is a vulgar, staring place, and far too big.”
“Don’t speak so, Hester. I can’t bear it. My own married home that your poor papa took me to!”
“I beg your pardon, mother. I had forgotten that. Of course taste was different in those days.”
“Oh, taste! Your poor papa had beautiful taste. There are some things there that just break my heart—the ormolu set that everybody admired so, and the picture of me over the mantelpiece in the little parlour. It used to be in the drawing-room, but you can’t wonder at them changing it. The hair was worn high then, on the top of your head, and short sleeves. It was very becoming to me. And to hear you call it vulgar and staring—”
“It was a mistake, mamma. I did not think what I was saying. Forgive me, mother dear!”
“You know I would forgive you anything,” cried Mrs. John, now fairly launched, and forgetting all prudential restraints. “But oh, Hester, my darling, when he speaks to you don’t be hasty; think of all that is involved. I am not going to tell you what he wants to say—oh no, he would never forgive me. It is he himself that must tell you that. But Hester, oh, don’t speak hastily; don’t answer all in a moment, without thinking. Often, often a girl says what she is sorry for, not being prepared. Think, my darling, what it would be—not only to be rich, but to be independent—to have your own house, all your own, and no charity—to have as much money as you want, to be able to help the poor, and do everything you wish, and to make me happy, so happy, to the end of my days!”
It was thus that Mrs. John treated Harry’s secret. She forgot all her precautions and her conviction that from himself only the proposal ought to come. The dialogues she had invented, the long conversations with Hester which she had held in imagination, delicately, diplomatically leading up to the main possibility, had all disappeared when the moment came. When she began to speak she had forgotten them altogether, and gone off impromptu without recollecting a syllable of all that had been so painfully prepared: and her own eloquence, if it did not affect her daughter, affected herself beyond description: her mouth quivered, the tears flowed out of her eyes. Hester, who could no more bear to see her mother cry (though she had seen that sight often enough) than to see the tears of a child, rose from her seat, and coming round hurriedly behind Mrs. John’s chair put her arms caressingly round her, and laid her cheek to that wet one. She was not so entirely unprepared but that she understood well enough what this emotion meant, but she tried to look as if it had a different meaning altogether. She drew her mother’s head to her breast and kissed her.
“Dear mother! Is it really so bitter to you to be dependent? and you never let me know that you felt it.”
“What would have been the good,” said the poor lady, “when we could do nothing? The thing was to put the best face upon it. But now when it is all in your power—”
“It was always in my power,” said Hester, with a mixture of real earnestness and a desire to persuade her mother that she put a different meaning upon all that had been said; “if you had not stopped me, mother; but I have not lost my accent, and if you will only give your consent now—I am older, and people will trust me with their children.”
“Oh, Hester, do not vex me so,” cried Mrs. John. “Do you think that is what I mean? And besides, if I were to give you leave tomorrow, Catherine, you know, would never consent.”
“If you will trust to me,” said Hester, colouring high, “what Catherine pleases shall not be the last word.”
Mrs. John wrung her hands, drawing herself out of Hester’s arms, to gaze into her face.
“Oh, why will you make such a mistake? It is not that. I am not strong to stand out against you, Hester, but for your own sake. And Catherine would never let you do it. Oh, this is quite a different thing, my dear love! Not to work like any poor girl, but to be far above that, to have everything that heart could desire. And all so right and so nice, and so suitable, Hester. If your dear papa had lived and all had gone well I could not have wished for a better match.”
“Match!” said the girl, colouring violently.
She had indeed understood well enough that Harry was behind all her mother’s anxious insinuations, her promises and entreaties, but she had been confident in her power to defeat Mrs. John by aid of her own confused statements always capable of bearing two meanings. This word “match,” however, was one upon which there could be no confusion, and she was immediately driven to bay. She drew herself away from the tender attitude in which she had been standing.
“I never thought,” she said, “that this was a thing that could be discussed between us,” with all the unreasonable
