It had grown precious to her since it had become the stay of
Leopold's. Notwithstanding the terrible state of suspense and horror
in which she now lived, seeming to herself at times an actual sharer
in her brother's guilt, she would yet occasionally find herself
exulting in the thought of being the guardian angel he called her.
Now that by his bedside hour plodded after hour in something of
sameness and much of weariness, she yet looked back on her past as
on the history of a slug.
During all the time she scarcely saw her cousin George, and indeed,
she could hardly tell why, shrunk from him. In the cold, bright,
shadowless, north-windy day of his presence, there was little
consolation to be gathered, and for strength--to face him made a
fresh demand upon the little she had. Her physical being had
certainly lost. But the countenance which, after a long interval of
absence, the curate at length one morning descried in the midst of
the congregation, had, along with its pallor and look of hidden and
suppressed trouble, gathered the expression of a higher order of
existence. Not that she had drawn a single consoling draught from
any one of the wells of religion, or now sought the church for the
sake of any reminder of something found precious: the great quiet
place drew her merely with the offer of its two hours' restful
stillness.
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