So, when the carriage stopped at the door of the first cottage, she had made up her mind that she could not stand much in the way of these miserable confidences to-day, and would make her visits short.
But when she entered the house she was conscious of a total change of atmosphere. Every creature in the room gave proof of this, according to his or her kind. The old woman who sat knitting by the hearth looked up at her with a dim twinkle in the eyes that had heretofore expressed nothing but a consciousness that things were bad and getting worse; and the children, who, indeed, had taken little count of the depression of their elders, now manifestly shared their relief from it. It was their mother who, with a strange smile of hope on her careworn face and a fervent clasping together of her work-worn hands, made the explanation to the visitor.
But this explanation, when it had been heard, was almost more of an ordeal to Bettina than the one which she had feared. Certainly it made a stronger demand upon her power of self-control. For the key-note of it all was Horace. He had been here before her, and had done, or promised to have done, all that she had so passionately wished to do. His name was on their lips continually; even the little children lisped it. It was "his lordship this" and "his lordship that," in a way that furnished a strange contrast to the studied avoidance of the word under former conditions.
Somehow, glad as she was, it was hard for Bettina to bear. In the midst of the accounts of what his lordship had done and said, and how he was to right all their wrongs and make everybody happy, she got up and took a hurried leave.
What was the use of her staying here? What was a little sympathetic feeling, more or less, to these wretchedly poor creatures? It was their material needs that they wished satisfied, and a stronger hand than hers was at work on these. And if--as seemed so plain, as she could so well imagine from her own knowledge of him--he was able and willing to give them the sympathy and interest as well as the practical help they needed, where was any use for her? There was none--nobody needed her, she told herself, desperately, and the sooner she lost herself in the oblivion of America the better.