At last, when their mutual labor was all finished, she took Phœbe’s hand in her own trembling one.
“Bear with me, my dear child,” she cried; “for truly my heart is full to the brim! Bear with me; for I love you, Phœbe, though I speak so roughly. Think nothing of it, dearest child! By and by, I shall be kind, and only kind!”
“My dearest cousin, cannot you tell me what has happened?” asked Phœbe, with a sunny and tearful sympathy. “What is it that moves you so?”
“Hush! hush! He is coming!” whispered Hepzibah, hastily wiping her eyes. “Let him see you first, Phœbe; for you are young and rosy, and cannot help letting a smile break out whether or no. He always liked bright faces! And mine is old now, and the tears are hardly dry on it. He never could abide tears. There; draw the curtain a little, so that the shadow may fall across his side of the table! But let there be a good deal of sunshine, too; for he never was fond of gloom, as some people are. He has had but little sunshine in his life,—poor Clifford,—and, oh, what a black shadow. Poor, poor Clifford!”
Thus murmuring in an undertone, as if speaking rather to her own heart than to Phœbe, the old gentlewoman stepped on tiptoe about the room, making such arrangements as suggested themselves at the crisis.
Meanwhile there was a step in the passage-way, above stairs. Phœbe recognized it as the same which had passed upward, as through her dream, in the night-time. The approaching guest, whoever it might be, appeared to pause at the head of the staircase; he paused twice or thrice in the descent; he paused again at the foot. Each time, the delay seemed to be without purpose, but rather from a forgetfulness of the purpose which had set him in motion, or as if the person’s feet came involuntarily to a stand-still because the motive-power was too feeble to sustain his progress. Finally, he made a long pause at the threshold of the parlor. He took hold of the knob of the door; then loosened his grasp without opening it. Hepzibah, her hands convulsively clasped, stood gazing at the entrance.
“Dear Cousin Hepzibah, pray don’t look so!” said Phœbe, trembling; for her cousin’s emotion, and this mysteriously reluctant step, made her feel as if a ghost were coming into the room. “You really frighten me! Is something awful going to happen?”