Susan did not reply for a long time; she
was so indignant at this intermeddling of a stranger in the deep
family sorrow and shame. Mrs. Gale thought she was gaining the day,
and urged her arguments more pitilessly. Even Michael winced for
Susan, and wondered at her silence. He shrank out of sight, and into
the shadow, hoping that his sister might prevail, but annoyed at the
hard way in which she kept putting the case.
Suddenly Susan turned round from the occupation she had pretended to
be engaged in, and said to him in a low voice, which yet not only
vibrated itself, but made its hearers thrill through all their
obtuseness:
"Michael Hurst! does your sister speak truth, think you?"
Both women looked at him for his answer; Mrs. Gale without anxiety,
for had she not said the very words they had spoken together before?
had she not used the very arguments that he himself had suggested?
Susan, on the contrary, looked to his answer as settling her doom for
life; and in the gloom of her eyes you might have read more despair
than hope.
He shuffled his position. He shuffled in his words.
"What is it you ask? My sister has said many things."
"I ask you," said Susan, trying to give a crystal clearness both to
her expressions and her pronunciation, "if, knowing as you do how
Will is afflicted, you will help me to take that charge of him which
I promised my mother on her death-bed that I would do; and which
means, that I shall keep him always with me, and do all in my power
to make his life happy.
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