She closed her lips.

"You might have spared yourself the trouble of delivering that

tirade," answered Georgiana. "Everybody knows you are the most

selfish, heartless creature in existence: and I know your spiteful

hatred towards me: I have had a specimen of it before in the trick

you played me about Lord Edwin Vere: you could not bear me to be

raised above you, to have a title, to be received into circles where

you dare not show your face, and so you acted the spy and informer,

and ruined my prospects for ever." Georgiana took out her

handkerchief and blew her nose for an hour afterwards; Eliza sat

cold, impassable, and assiduously industrious.

True, generous feeling is made small account of by some, but here

were two natures rendered, the one intolerably acrid, the other

despicably savourless for the want of it. Feeling without judgment

is a washy draught indeed; but judgment untempered by feeling is too

bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition.

It was a wet and windy afternoon: Georgiana had fallen asleep on

the sofa over the perusal of a novel; Eliza was gone to attend a

saint's-day service at the new church--for in matters of religion

she was a rigid formalist: no weather ever prevented the punctual

discharge of what she considered her devotional duties; fair or

foul, she went to church thrice every Sunday, and as often on week-

days as there were prayers.

I bethought myself to go upstairs and see how the dying woman sped,

who lay there almost unheeded: the very servants paid her but a

remittent attention: the hired nurse, being little looked after,

would slip out of the room whenever she could. Bessie was faithful;

but she had her own family to mind, and could only come occasionally

to the hall. I found the sick-room unwatched, as I had expected:

no nurse was there; the patient lay still, and seemingly lethargic;

her livid face sunk in the pillows: the fire was dying in the

grate. I renewed the fuel, re-arranged the bedclothes, gazed awhile

on her who could not now gaze on me, and then I moved away to the

window.

The rain beat strongly against the panes, the wind blew

tempestuously: "One lies there," I thought, "who will soon be

beyond the war of earthly elements. Whither will that spirit--now

struggling to quit its material tenement--flit when at length

released?"

In pondering the great mystery, I thought of Helen Burns, recalled

her dying words--her faith--her doctrine of the equality of

disembodied souls. I was still listening in thought to her well-

remembered tones--still picturing her pale and spiritual aspect, her

wasted face and sublime gaze, as she lay on her placid deathbed, and

whispered her longing to be restored to her divine Father's bosom--

when a feeble voice murmured from the couch behind: "Who is that?"




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