EXPERIENCED women are not frightened when a woman faints, nor do they
hastily attribute it to anything but physical causes, which they have
often seen produce it. Catherine bustled about; laid the girl down with
her head on the floor quite flat, opened the window, and unloosed her
dress as she lay. Not till she had done all this did she step to the
door and say, rather loudly:
"Come here, if you please."
Margaret Van Eyck and Reicht came and found Margaret lying quite flat,
and Catherine beating her hands.
"Oh, my poor girl! What have you done to her?"
"Me?" said Catherine, angrily.
"What has happened, then?"
"Nothing, madam; nothing more than is natural in her situation."
Margaret Van Eyck coloured with ire.
"You do well to speak so coolly," said she, "you that are the cause of
her situation."
"That I am not," said Catherine, bluntly, "nor any woman born."
"What? was it not you and your husband that kept them apart: and now he
is gone to Italy all alone. Situation indeed? You have broken her heart
amongst you."
"Why, madam? Who is it then? in Heaven's name? to hear you one would
think this was my Gerard's lass. But that can't be. This fur never cost
less than five crowns the ell; besides, this young gentlewoman is a
wife; or ought to be."
"Of course she ought. And who is the cause she is none? Who came between
them at the very altar?"
"God forgive them, whoever it was," said Catherine, gravely: "me it was
not, nor my man."
"Well," said the other, a little softened, "now you have seen her
perhaps you will not be quite so bitter against her, madam. She is
coming to, thank Heaven."
"Me bitter against her?" said Catherine: "no; that is all over. Poor
soul! trouble behind her and trouble afore her; and to think of my
setting her, of all living women, to read Gerard's letter to me. Ay, and
that was what made her go off, I'll be sworn. She is coming to. What,
sweetheart? be not afeard, none are here but friends."
They seated her in an easy chair. As the colour was creeping back to her
face and lips, Catherine drew Margaret Van Eyck aside.
"Is she staying with you, if you please?"
"No, madam."
"I wouldn't let her go back to Sevenbergen to-night, then."
"That is as she pleases. She still refuses to bide the night."
"Ay, but you are older than she is; you can make her. There, she is
beginning to notice." Catherine then put her mouth to Margaret Van
Eyck's ear for half a moment; it did not seem time enough to whisper a
word, far less a sentence. But on some topics females can flash
communication to female like lightning, or thought itself.
The old lady started, and whispered back.
"It's false! it is a calumny! it is monstrous! Look at her face. It is
blasphemy to accuse such a face."
"Tut! tut! tut!" said the other, "you might as well say this is not my
hand. I ought to know; and I tell ye it is _so_."
Then much to Margaret Van Eyck's surprise she went up to the girl, and,
taking her round the neck, kissed her warmly. "I suffered for Gerard,
and you shed your blood for him I do hear: his own words show me I have
been to blame, the very words you have read to me. Ay, Gerard, my child,
I have held aloof from her. But I'll make it up to her, once I begin.
You are my daughter from this hour."
Another warm embrace sealed this hasty compact, and the woman of impulse
was gone.
Margaret lay back in her chair, and a feeble smile stole over her face.
Gerard's mother had kissed her and called her daughter; but the next
moment she saw her old friend looking at her with a vexed air.
"I wonder you let that woman kiss you."
"His mother!" murmured Margaret, half reproachfully.
"Mother, or no mother, you would not let her touch you if you knew what
she whispered in my ear about you."
"About me?" said Margaret, faintly.
"Ay, about you whom she never saw till to-night." The old lady was
proceeding, with some hesitation and choice of language, to make
Margaret share her indignation, when an unlooked-for interruption closed
her lips.
The young woman slid from her chair to her knees, and began to pray
piteously to her for pardon. From the words and the manner of her
penitence a bystander would have gathered she had inflicted some cruel
wrong, some intolerable insult, upon her venerable friend.