Still oppressed by reflections which pointed to the future in this discouraging way, I was startled by a voice outside the door—a sweet, sad voice—saying, "May I come in?"
The Minister's eyes opened instantly: he raised himself in his bed.
"Eunice, at last!" he cried. "Let her in."
CHAPTER XXXIX. THE ADOPTED CHILD
I opened the door.
Eunice passed me with the suddenness almost of a flash of light. When I turned toward the bed, her arms were round her father's neck. "Oh, poor papa, how ill you look!" Commonplace expressions of fondness, and no more; but the tone gave them a charm that subdued me. Never had I felt so indulgent toward Mr. Gracedieu's unreasonable fears as when I saw him in the embrace of his adopted daughter. She had already reminded me of the bygone day when a bright little child had sat on my knee and listened to the ticking of my watch.
The Minister gently lifted her head from his breast. "My darling," he said, "you don't see my old friend. Love him, and look up to him, Eunice. He will be your friend, too, when I am gone."
She came to me and offered her cheek to be kissed. It was sadly pale, poor soul—and I could guess why. But her heart was now full of her father. "Do you think he is seriously ill?" she whispered. What I ought to have said I don't know. Her eyes, the sweetest, truest, loveliest eyes I ever saw in a human face, were pleading with me. Let my enemies make the worst of it, if they like—I did certainly lie. And if I deserved my punishment, I got it; the poor child believed me! "Now I am happier," she said, gratefully. "Only to hear your voice seems to encourage me. On our way here, Selina did nothing but talk of you. She told me I shouldn't have time to feel afraid of the great man; he would make me fond of him directly. I said, 'Are you fond of him?' She said, 'Madly in love with him, my dear.' My little friend really thinks you like her, and is very proud of it. There are some people who call her ugly. I hope you don't agree with them?"
I believe I should have lied again, if Mr. Gracedieu had not called me to the bedside.
"How does she strike you?" he whispered, eagerly. "Is it too soon to ask if she shows her age in her face?"
"Neither in her face nor her figure," I answered: "it astonishes me that you can ever have doubted it. No stranger, judging by personal appearance, could fail to make the mistake of thinking Helena the oldest of the two."
He looked fondly at Eunice. "Her figure seems to bear out what you say," he went on. "Almost childish, isn't it?"
I could not agree to that. Slim, supple, simply graceful in every movement, Eunice's figure, in the charm of first youth, only waited its perfect development. Most men, looking at her as she stood at the other end of the room with her back toward us, would have guessed her age to be sixteen.
Finding that I failed to agree with him, Mr. Gracedieu's misgivings returned. "You speak very confidently," he said, "considering that you have not seen the girls together. Think what a dreadful blow it would be to me if you made a mistake."
I declared, with perfect sincerity, that there was no fear of a mistake. The bare idea of making the proposed comparison was hateful to me. If Helena and I had happened to meet at that moment, I should have turned away from her by instinct—she would have disturbed my impressions of Eunice.
The Minister signed to me to move a little nearer to him. "I must say it," he whispered, "and I am afraid of her hearing me. Is there anything in her face that reminds you of her miserable mother?"
I had hardly patience to answer the question: it was simply preposterous. Her hair was by many shades darker than her mother's hair; her eyes were of a different color. There was an exquisite tenderness and sincerity in their expression—made additionally beautiful, to my mind, by a gentle, uncomplaining sadness. It was impossible even to think of the eyes of the murderess when I looked at her child. Eunice's lower features, again, had none of her mother's regularity of proportion. Her smile, simple and sweet, and soon passing away, was certainly not an inherited smile on the maternal side. Whether she resembled her father, I was unable to conjecture—having never seen him. The one thing certain was, that not the faintest trace, in feature or expression, of Eunice's mother was to be seen in Eunice herself. Of the two girls, Helena—judging by something in the color of her hair, and by something in the shade of her complexion—might possibly have suggested, in those particulars only, a purely accidental resemblance to my terrible prisoner of past times.
The revival of Mr. Gracedieu's spirits indicated a temporary change only, and was already beginning to pass away. The eyes which had looked lovingly at Eunice began to look languidly now: his head sank on the pillow with a sigh of weak content. "My pleasure has been almost too much for me," he said. "Leave me for a while to rest, and get used to it."
Eunice kissed his forehead—and we left the room.
CHAPTER XL. THE BRUISED HEART.
When we stepped out on the landing, I observed that my companion paused. She looked at the two flights of stairs below us before she descended them. It occurred to me that there must be somebody in the house whom she was anxious to avoid.
Arrived at the lower hall, she paused again, and proposed in a whisper that we should go into the garden. As we advanced along the backward division of the hall, I saw her eyes turn distrustfully toward the door of the room in which Helena had received me. At last, my slow perceptions felt with her and understood her. Eunice's sensitive nature recoiled from a chance meeting with the wretch who had laid waste all that had once been happy and hopeful in that harmless young life.
"Will you come with me to the part of the garden that I am fondest of?" she asked.
I offered her my arm. She led me in silence to a rustic seat, placed under the shade of a mulberry tree. I saw a change in her face as we sat down—a tender and beautiful change. At that moment the girl's heart was far away from me. There was some association with this corner of the garden, on which I felt that I must not intrude.
"I was once very happy here," she said. "When the time of the heartache came soon after, I was afraid to look at the old tree and the bench under it. But that is all over now. I like to remember the hours that were once dear to me, and to see the place that recalls them. Do you know who I am thinking of? Don't be afraid of distressing me. I never cry now."
"My dear child, I have heard your sad story—but I can't trust myself to speak of it."
"Because you are so sorry for me?"
"No words can say how sorry I am!"
"But you are not angry with Philip?"
"Not angry! My poor dear, I am afraid to tell you how angry I am with him."
"Oh, no! You mustn't say that. If you wish to be kind to me—and I am sure you do wish it—don't think bitterly of Philip."
When I remember that the first feeling she roused in me was nothing worthier of a professing Christian than astonishment, I drop in my own estimation to the level of a savage. "Do you really mean," I was base enough to ask, "that you have forgiven him?"
She said, gently: "How could I help forgiving him?"
The man who could have been blessed with such love as this, and who could have cast it away from him, can have been nothing but an idiot. On that ground—though I dared not confess it to Eunice—I forgave him, too.