She made no immediate answer, and he had had time to doubt whether he ought to let her continue in that exhausting attitude any longer, when she looked up and said, "You will all be with her there."

"She has flown on to point your aim more steadfastly," said Dr. May.

Flora shuddered, but spoke calmly--"No, I shall not meet her."

"My child!" he exclaimed, "do you know what you are saying?"

"I know, I am not in the way," said Flora, still in the same fearfully quiet, matter-of-fact tone. "I never have been"--and she bent over her child, as if taking her leave for eternity.

His tongue almost clave to the roof of his mouth, as he heard the words--words elicited by one of those hours of true reality that, like death, rend aside every wilful cloak of self-deceit, and self-approbation. He had no power to speak at first; when he recovered it, his reply was not what his heart had, at first, prompted.

"Flora! How has this dear child been saved?" he said. "What has released her from the guilt she inherited through you, through me, through all?

Is not the Fountain open?"

"She never wasted grace," said Flora.

"My child! my Flora!" he exclaimed, losing the calmness he had gained by such an effort; "you must not talk thus--it is wrong! Only your own morbid feeling can treat this--this--as a charge against you, and if it were, indeed"--he sank his voice--"that such consequences destroyed hope, oh, Flora! where should I be?"

"No," said Flora, "this is not what I meant. It is that I have never set my heart right. I am not like you nor my sisters. I have seemed to myself, and to you, to be trying to do right, but it was all hollow, for the sake of praise and credit. I know it, now it is too late; and He has let me destroy my child here, lest I should have destroyed her everlasting life, like my own."

The most terrible part of this sentence was to Dr. May, that Flora spoke as if she knew it all as a certainty, and without apparent emotion, with all the calmness of despair. What she had never guessed before had come clearly and fully upon her now, and without apparent novelty, or, perhaps, there had been misgivings in the midst of her complacent self-satisfaction. She did not even seem to perceive how dreadfully she was shocking her father, whose sole comfort was in believing her language the effect of exaggerated self-reproach. His profession had rendered him not new to the sight of despondency, and, dismayed as he was, he was able at once to speak to the point.

"If it were indeed so, her removal would be the greatest blessing."

"Yes," said her mother, and her assent was in the same tone of resigned despair, owning it best for her child to be spared a worldly education, and loving her truly enough to acquiesce.

"I meant the greatest blessing to you," continued Dr. May, "if it be sent to open your eyes, and raise your thoughts upwards. Oh, Flora, are not afflictions tokens of infinite love?"

She could not accept the encouragement, and only formed, with her lips, the words, "Mercy to her--wrath to me!"

The simplicity and hearty piety which, with all Dr. May's faults, had always been part of his character, and had borne him, in faith and trust, through all his trials, had never belonged to her. Where he had been sincere, erring only from impulsiveness, she had been double-minded and calculating; and, now that her delusion had been broken down, she had nothing to rest upon. Her whole religious life had been mechanical, deceiving herself more than even others, and all seemed now swept away, except the sense of hypocrisy, and of having cut herself off, for ever, from her innocent child. Her father saw that it was vain to argue with her, and only said, "You will think otherwise by and by, my dear. Now shall I say a prayer before we go down?"

As she made no reply, he repeated the Lord's Prayer, but she did not join; and then he added a broken, hesitating intercession for the mourners, which caused her to bury her face deeper in her hands, but her dull wretchedness altered not.

Rising, he said authoritatively, "Come, Flora, you must go to bed. See, it is morning."

"You have sat up all night with me!" said Flora, with somewhat of her anxious, considerate self.

"So has George. He had just dropped asleep on the sofa when you awoke."

"I thought he was in anger," said she.

"Not with you, dearest."

"No, I remember now, not where it was justly due. Papa," she said, pausing, as to recall her recollection, "what did I do? I must have done something very unkind to make him go away and leave me."

"I insisted on his leaving you, my dear. You seemed oppressed, and his affectionate ways were doing you harm; so I was hardhearted, and turned him out, sadly against his will."

"Poor George!" said Flora, "has he been left to bear it alone all this time? How much distressed he must have been. I must have vexed him grievously. You don't guess how fond he was of her. I must go to him at once."

"That is right, my dear."

"Don't praise me," said she, as if she could not bear it. "All that is left for me is to do what I can for him."

Dr. May felt cheered. He was sure that hope must again rise out of unselfish love and duty.

Their return awoke George, who started, half sitting up, wondering why he was spending the night in so unusual a manner, and why Flora looked so pale, in the morning light, with her loosened, drooping hair.

She went straight to him, and, kneeling by his side, said, "George, forgive!" The same moment he had caught her to his bosom; but so impressed was his tardy mind with the peril of talking to her, that he held her in his arms without a single word, till Dr. May had unclosed his lips--a sign would not suffice--he must have a sentence to assure him; and then it was such joy to have her restored, and his fondness and solicitude were so tender and eager in their clumsiness, that his father-in-law was touched to the heart.

Flora was quite herself again, in presence of mind and power of dealing with him; and Dr. May left them to each other, and went to his own room, for such rest as sorrow, sympathy, and the wakening city, would permit him.

When the house was astir in the morning, and the doctor had met Meta in the breakfast-room, and held with her a sad, affectionate conversation, George came down with a fair report of his wife, and took her father to see her.

That night had been like an illness to her, and, though perfectly composed, she was feeble and crushed, keeping the room darkened, and reluctant to move or speak. Indeed, she did not seem able to give her attention to any one's voice, except her husband's. When Dr. May, or Meta, spoke to her, she would miss what they said, beg their pardon, and ask them to repeat it; and sometimes, even then, become bewildered.

They tried reading to her, but she did not seem to listen, and her half-closed eye had the expression of listless dejection, that her father knew betokened that, even as last night, her heart refused to accept promises of comfort as meant for her.

For George, however, her attention was always ready, and was perpetually claimed. He was forlorn and at a loss without her, every moment; and, in the sorrow which he too felt most acutely, could not have a minute's peace unless soothed by her presence; he was dependent on her to a degree which amazed and almost provoked the doctor, who could not bear to have her continually harassed and disturbed, and yet was much affected by witnessing so much tenderness, especially in Flora, always the cold utilitarian member of his family.

In the middle of the day she rose and dressed, because George was unhappy at having to sit without her, though only in the next room. She sat in the large arm-chair, turned away from the blinded windows, never speaking nor moving, save when he came to her, to make her look at his letters and notes, when she would, with the greatest patience and sweetness, revise them, suggest word or sentence, rouse herself to consider each petty detail, and then sink back into her attitude of listless dejection. To all besides, she appeared totally indifferent; gently courteous to Meta and to her father, when they addressed her, but otherwise showing little consciousness whether they were in the room; and yet, when something was passing about her father's staying or returning, she rose from her seat, came up to him before he was aware, and said, "Papa! papa! you will not leave me!" in such an imploring tone, that if he had ever thought of quitting her, he could not have done so.

He longed to see her left to perfect tranquillity, but such could not be in London. Though theirs was called a quiet house, the rushing stream of traffic wearied his country ears, the door bell seemed ceaselessly ringing, and though Meta bore the brunt of the notes and messages, great numbers necessarily came up to Mr. Rivers, and of these Flora was not spared one. Dr. May had his share too of messages and business, and friends and relations, the Rivers' kindred, always ready to take offence with their rich connections, and who would not be satisfied with inquiries, at the door, but must see Meta, and would have George fetched down to them--old aunts, who wanted the whole story of the child's illness, and came imagining there was something to be hushed up; Lady Leonora extremely polite, but extremely disgusted at the encounter with them; George ready to be persuaded to take every one up to see his wife, and the prohibition to be made by Dr. May over and over again--it was a most tedious, wearing afternoon, and at last, when the visitors had gone, and George had hurried back to his wife, Dr. May threw himself into an arm-chair and said, "Oh, Meta, sorrow weighs more heavily in town than in the country!"

"Yes!" said Meta. "If one only could go out and look at the flowers, and take poor Flora up a nosegay!"

"I don't think it would make much difference to her," sighed the doctor.

"Yes, I think it would," said Meta; "it did to me. The sights there speak of the better sights."

"The power to look must come from within," said Dr. May, thinking of his poor daughter.

"Ay," said Meta, "as Mr. Ernescliffe said, 'heaven is as near--!' But the skirts of heaven are more easily traced in our mountain view than here, where, if I looked out of window, I should only see that giddy string of carriages and people pursuing each other!"

"Well, we shall get her home as soon as she is able to move, and I hope it may soothe her. What a turmoil it is! There has not been one moment without noise in the twenty-two hours I have been here!"

"What would you say if you were in the city?"

"Ah! there's no talking of it; but if I had been a fashionable London physician, as my father-in-law wanted to make me, I should have been dead long ago!"

"No, I think you would have liked it very much."

"Why?"

"Love's a flower that will not die," repeated Meta, half smiling. "You would have found so much good to do--"

"And so much misery to rend one's heart," said Dr. May. "But, after all, I suppose there is only a certain capacity of feeling."

"It is within, not without, as you said," returned Meta.