Then the girl made a desperate effort to control herself. She reached for Ruth's hand and gripped it in her young, strong one. Then, after another moment, she spoke:--
"Forgive me. I did not mean to hurt you; I did not mean to cry at all; I said that I would not; but it was all so new, so--O mamma, mamma!"
The head, which had been raised a little, went down again; and the exceeding bitterness of that last wailing cry of renunciation Ruth never forgot. She had grace to be thankful that the mother was not there to hear it.
But the violence of the storm was over, at least so far as its outward exhibition was concerned. In a few minutes more the girl spoke quietly enough.
"He is very, very good. I did not know that any--just human being could be so good. And he spoke tenderly all the time of--of my mother. I could feel in his voice the sound of his great love for her. My poor, poor mother!"
Later, after much had been said and there had been silence between them for a few minutes, she spoke suddenly:--
"He asked me to call him 'father,' he said he wanted it." Ruth could not suppress a little start of surprise and--was it pain? In all her hours of thinking over this whole tragedy, trying to plan how all things would be, she had not thought of this. Yet it was like Erskine; the utmost atonement that he could make, in word as well as deed, would be made.
"What did you say in reply?" she asked the waiting girl.
"I said that I would try to do in all things just as he advised. I could not do less, Mrs. Burnham; he is very good. I told him about my own dear papa, and that I should always, _always_ love and honor him as I had reason to; and he was good about that, too; he said that the way I felt about him was not only natural but it was right, and that he honored me for it. Then he spoke of Baby Erskine and called him my little brother; and that broke my heart. I have so longed to have some one of my very own. Mrs. Burnham, do you think perhaps that--that papa understands about it all, and would want me to--"
She seemed unable to express her thought in words, but Ruth understood it, and the yearning wistfulness in the child's voice was not to be resisted. The older woman put aside her own pain to comfort and counsel this girl who had certainly in strange ways been thrust upon her care.