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Updated: May 23, 2025
It was as though she held her father's dying form in her arms, protecting him against the same meddling and tyrannical force that had injured him while he lived, and was still making mouths at him now that he was dead. She and Augustina went to the sea to Folkestone, for Augustina's health. Here Mrs.
The priest looked up, startled by the appearance of the young lady. Laura had marked the outburst of warm weather by the donning of a white dress and her summer hat. In one hand she held a bunch of lilac that she had been gathering for her stepmother; in the other a volume of a French life of St. Theresa that she had taken an hour before from Augustina's table.
Helbeck standing silent on the steps as they approached, of Hubert's behaviour, of her host's manner to her in the hall, made her shut her eyes and hide her red face against Fricka for sympathy. How was she ever to meet Mr. Helbeck again, to hold her own against him any more! An hour later Laura, very carefully dressed, and holding herself very erect, entered Augustina's room.
The dark circles round her eyes did but increase their brilliance; the hot fire in Augustina's rooms made her cheeks glow; and the bright blue cotton of her dress had been specially chosen by Molly Friedland to set off the gold of her hair. She was gay too, to Augustina's astonishment.
She was as soft, as normal, as self-controlled, as Laura was wilful and irritable. But there was a very real affection between them. Years passed. Insensibly Augustina's health began to fail; and with it the new cheerfulness of her middle life. Then Fountain himself fell suddenly and dangerously ill.
His eyes constantly dropt, especially in her presence and Augustina's, his evident cold shrinking from the company of women she thought of them with disgust and anger. For she said to herself that now she understood what they meant. Of late she had been constantly busy with the books that stood to the right of Helbeck's table.
Helbeck and the others were kneeling! for instinctively she felt that it was to no empty shrine the adoration of those silent figures was being offered. Fragments from Augustina's talk at Folkestone came back to her.
The sun, indeed, was gone, but the west still glowed, and the tall larches in the front enclosure stood black against a golden dome of sky. Laura rose and left the room. As she opened the door she caught Augustina's quick look of relief and the drop of the knitting-needles. Fricka was safely prisoned upstairs.
Her face shone through the tears that bedewed it. Already the emotion of her drive the last battles with the wind had for the moment restored the brilliancy of eye and cheek. Even Augustina's dim sight was held by her, and by the tumbled gold of her hair as it caught the candle-light. But the name which had given Laura a thrill of joy had roused a disturbed and troubled echo in Mrs. Fountain.
For the Squire, by Augustina's wish, and against the girl's own judgment, knew nothing of her presence in the neighbourhood, and she could only see her stepmother on days when Augustina could be certain that her brother was away. During part of Passion week, all Holy week, and half Easter week, priests had been staying in the house or the orphanage ceremony had detained the Squire.
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