'It is very kind – it is more than I had any right to expect,' said Mrs Haldane. 'And we are going to the country too. We are going to Dura, to a house Mr Burton has kindly offered to us. Oh, Mrs Drummond, now I think of it, probably we owe it to you.'
'No,' said Helen, startled and mystified; and then she added slowly, 'I am going to Dura too.'
'Oh, how very lucky that is! Oh, how glad I am!' said the old lady. 'Stephen, do you hear? Of course, Mr Burton is your cousin; it is natural you should be near him. Stephen, this is good news for you. You will have Miss Norah, whom you were always so fond of, to come about you as she used to do – that is, if her mamma will allow her. Oh, my dear, I am so glad! I must go and tell Jane. Jane, here is something that will make you quite happy. Mrs Drummond is coming too.'
She went to the door to summon her daughter, and Helen was left alone with the sick man. She had not loved him in the old time, but yet he looked a part of Robert now, and her heart melted towards him. She was glad to have him to herself, as glad as if he had been a brother. She put her hand on the arm of his chair, laying a kind of doubtful claim to him. 'You have seen what they say?' she asked, looking in his face.
'Yes, all; with fury,' he said, 'with indignation! Oh my God, that I should be chained here, and good for nothing! They might as well have said it of that child.'
'Oh, is it not cruel, cruel!' she said.
These half-dozen words were all that passed between them, and yet they comforted her more than all Dr Maurice had said. He had been indignant too, it is true; but not with this fiery, visionary wrath – the rage of the helpless, who can do nothing.
When Miss Jane came in with her mother, they did the most of the talking, and Helen shrunk into herself; but when she had risen to go away, Stephen thrust a little packet into her hand. 'Read it when you go home,' he said. It was his little dissenting magazine, the insignificant brochure which she would have scorned so in the old days. With what tears, with what swelling of her heart, with what an agony of pride and love and sorrow she read it that night!
And so the old house was closed, and the old life ended. Henceforward, everything that awaited her was cold and sad and new.