"Young lady," said the doctor, "I would advise you to walk into another room till you are a little more composed."
"Every body, I find, is for hurrying me away," cried the sobbing Henrietta, whose honest heart swelled with its own affectionate integrity; "but they might all save themselves the trouble, for go I will not!"
"This is very wrong," said the doctor, "and must not be suffered: do you call it friendship to come about a sick person in this manner?"
"Oh my Miss Beverley!" cried Henrietta, "do you hear how they all upbraid me? how they all want to force me away from you, and to hinder me even from looking at you! Speak for me, sweet lady! speak for me yourself! tell them the poor Henrietta will not do you any harm; tell them she only wishes just to sit by you, and to see you!--I will hold by this dear hand,--I will cling to it till the last minute; and you will not, I know you will not, give orders to have it taken away from me!"
Dr Lyster, though his own good nature was much affected by this fond sorrow, now half angrily represented to her the impropriety of indulging it: but Henrietta, unused to disguise or repress her feelings, grew only the more violent, the more she was convinced of Cecilia's danger: "Oh look but at her," she exclaimed, "and take me from her if you can! see how her sweet eyes are fixed! look but what a change in her complexion!--She does not see me, she does not know me, --she does not hear me! her hand seems quite lifeless already, her face is all fallen away!--Oh that I had died twenty deaths before I had lived to see this sight!--poor wretched Henrietta, thou bast now no friend left in the world! thou mayst go and lie down in some corner, and no one will come and say to thee a word of comfort!"
"This must not be!" said Dr Lyster, "you must take her away."
"You shall not!" cried she, desperately, "I will stay with her till she has breathed her last, and I will stay with her still longer! and if she was to speak to you this moment, she would tell you that she chose it. She loved the poor Henrietta, and loved to have her near her; and when she was ill, and in much distress, she never once bid me leave her room. Is it not true, my sweet Miss Beverley? do you not know it to be true? Oh look not so dreadfully! turn to your unhappy Henrietta; sweetest, best of ladies! will you not speak to her once more? will you not say to her one single word?"