"
She held out her hand, and Phillis took it; looked hard in her mistress's
face--the kind, friendly face, that was not ashamed to be a friend even
to a poor servant; then, with something very like a sob, she turned and
ran out of the room.
But when she was gone, Christian sat down exhausted. With a
desperate self-control she had wrenched herself out of Phillis's power,
she had saved herself and her husband from the suspicion that it was
possible Dr. Grey's wife could receive, or give occasion to receive, a
secret letter, a love-letter, from any man; but when the effort was over
she broke down. Convulsive sobs, one after the other, shook her, until
she felt as if her very life were departing. And in the midst of this
agony appeared--Miss Gascoigne.
Aunt Henrietta had spent the whole night, except a brief space for
sleeping, in thinking over and talking over her duties and her wrongs,
the two being mixed up together in inextinguishable confusion. Almost
any subject, after being churned up in such a nature as hers for twelve
mortal hours, would at the end look quite different from what it did at
first, or what it really was. And so, with all honesty of purpose, and
with the firmest conviction that it was the only means of saving her
brother-in-law and his family from irretrievable misery and disgrace,
poor Miss Gascoigne had broken through all her habits, risen, dressed,
and breakfasted at an unearthly hour, and there she stood at the Lodge
door at nine in the morning, determined to "do her duty," as she
expressed it, but looking miserably pale, and vainly restraining her
agitation so as to keep up a good appearance "before the servants.
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