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Meldreth's conscience. The avenging sword, carried by a religion in which she believed, had pierced her heart. She would have given everything she had in the world to be able to follow the advice given in her Prayer-book, to go to a "discreet and learned minister of God's Word" Mr. Evandale, for instance and quiet her conscience by opening her grief to him. But both Sabina and Mrs.
She had heard nothing from Enid, who had kept her room for a couple of days after her return from Mrs. Meldreth's death-bed; but she was certain that something was now known to the girl which had not been known before.
She was a sad, silent, dull-faced individual, with blank looking eyes and a dreary mouth. There were anxious lines on her forehead and hollows in her pale cheeks, such as her easy circumstances did not account for. That she "enjoyed very poor health," according to the dictum of her neighbors, was considered by them to be a sufficient reason for Mrs. Meldreth's evident lack of peace of mind. Mr.
Meldreth was seriously ill and would like to see him. The informant added that she brought the Rector word of this, because Mrs. Meldreth's daughter Sabina was now at home, and seemed anxious to keep the clergyman away. The Rector's fighting instincts were at once aroused by this communication.
Whatever she might say or leave unsaid, neither of those two persons who looked at her could doubt for another moment that Sabina Meldreth had a secret a guilty secret weighing heavily upon her mind. Mrs. Meldreth's weak voice once more broke the silence. "I never thought of its harming you, my dear," she said. "I thought you was rich and would not want houses and lands. And, when Mrs.
Meldreth's confession might, for some reason or other, be the cause of her agitation. Certainly her distress and confusion were at that moment very marked. She had risen from her seat at his entrance, her color changing to crimson and then to dead white more than once during the Rector's speech.
"What does this constant meeting with Mr. Evandale mean?" she asked herself. Then her thoughts went back to the day of Mrs. Meldreth's death a day which she never remembered without a shudder. She knew very well that the poor old woman had bitterly repented of her share in a deed to which her daughter Sabina and Mrs. Vane had urged her; it had been as much as Mrs.
Meldreth she certainly showed peculiar favor. Many a gift of food and wine went from the Hall across Mrs. Meldreth's threshold; and it was noticed that Mrs. Meldreth was occasionally admitted to Mrs. Vane's own room for a private conference with the lady of Beechfield Hall herself. But those who commented wonderingly on that fact were reminded that Mrs.
It may be my duty to ask her for her soul's sake; you would be the last to counsel me to be silent then." "Oh, but you do not understand! I know now I know what is weighing on Sabina Meldreth's mind; and I have forgiven her." "It was a wrong done to you?" "Yes to me." "And to no one else?" Enid's head drooped. "I don't know I can't tell. I must think it over."
Flossy had begun seriously to consider the expediency of inducing Sabina to consign her mother to a lunatic asylum, or even to employ violent means for the shortening of her days on earth there was nothing at which her soul would have revolted if her own prosperity could have been secured by it; but Mrs. Meldreth's natural illness and death removed all necessity for extreme measures.
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