The child had no fear in her heart for herself. How could any one, she thought with a great gush of compassion, have fear of this poor, desolate, beautiful creature? She finished the plait, while the figure before her maintained its sinister immobility. Then she leaned forward and slipped her arms round it in a close embrace.
"My angel, how cold you are! Only your cheeks are hot--hot."
"Don't kiss me," said Lady Gerardine. "You don't know what defilement you are holding."
"I was his, his consecrate--body and soul, and I gave myself to another."
"Oh, Aunt Rosamond," cried the girl, with a sudden upspringing of tears, as a glimmering realisation of the other's anguished mind broke, upon her. "He is a happy spirit. He understands."
"It is you who cannot understand," angrily answered the woman. "Even in life he wrote: 'my flesh rebels against the thought.' It was the worst sting of death to him. And I never knew. Now I have lost him, I am lost."
Baby took the nerveless hands in hers, and chafed them while her tears rolled slowly.
"Pray to God, dearest," she whispered. "He will help you."
Rosamond drew away her hand with a great cry.
"Yes--there is, there is--a God of unsparing justice. Only a God could be so merciless and so just. It is just, it is just. I have sinned irremediably. I am punished for ever. What can you--you child, you child, what can you know of my sin?"
"I know this," cried Baby, kneeling down and gathering the cowering form to her strong embrace; "that you are ill, that you don't know what you're saying. But God is mercy," sobbed Aspasia, very reverently--she was shy of her religion, and spoke low, even amid her tears; "I know that God is mercy, and that those who are with Him must be merciful too."
"Do you cry for me?" said Lady Gerardine, a sort of wonder in her weary tones, as the wet cheeks were pressed against her face. "I cannot cry for myself. I am beyond tears."
With this, she suffered herself to be helped to rise, and made a feeble movement towards the bed. But at the sound of a closing door beneath, of steps on the stairs, she started violently and clutched the girl's arm.
"You will not let anybody in.... Nobody must come into my room--Aspasia--Aspasia!"