"Self-sufficiency!" she said with a groan; but with a sudden turn she
exclaimed, "You don't trust to my surrendering my judgment. I don't
think I am that kind of woman."
"Nor I that kind of man," he answered in his natural tone; then
affectionately, "No, indeed I want you to aid mine."
She lay back, wearied with the effort, and disinclined to break the
stillness. There was a move at the door; Mrs. Curtis, in an agony of
restless anxiety, could not help coming to see that the interview was
doing no harm.
"Don't go!" exclaimed Rachel, holding out her hand as he turned at the
opening of the door. "Oh, mother!" and there was an evident sound of
disappointment.
Mrs. Curtis was infinitely rejoiced to find her entrance thus
inopportune. "I only wished just to be sure it was not too much," she
said.
"Oh, mother, it is the first peace I have known for weeks! Can't you
stay?" looking up to him, as her mother retreated to tell Grace that it
was indeed all right.
This brought him to a footstool close beside her. "Thank you," he
murmured. "I was wondering just then if it would hurt you or agitate you
to give me some little satisfaction in going on with this. I know you
are too true not to have told me at once if your objections were more
personal than those you have made; but, Rachel, it is true, as you say,
that you have never consented!"
The tone of these words made Rachel raise herself, turn towards him, and
hold out both her hands. "Oh," she said, as he took them into his
own, "it was--it could be only that I cannot bear so much more than I
deserve."
"What! such an infliction?" in his own dry way.
"Such rest, such kindness, such generosity!"
"No, Rachel, there is something that makes it neither kindness nor
generosity. You know what I mean."
"And that is what overpowers me more than all," she sighed, in the full
surrender of herself. "I ought not to be so very happy."
"That is all I want to hear," he said, as he replaced her on her
cushions, and sat by her, holding her hand, but not speaking till the
next interruption, by one of the numerous convalescent meals, brought in
by Grace, who looked doubtful whether she would be allowed to come in,
and then was edified by the little arrangements he made, quietly taking
all into his own hands, and wonderfully lessening a sort of fidget that
Mrs. Curtis's anxiety had attached to all that was done for Rachel.
It was not for nothing that he had spent a year upon the sofa in the
irritably sensitive state of nerves that Bessie had described; and when
he could speak to Grace alone, he gave her a lecture on those little
refinements of unobtrusive care, that more demonstrative ailments had
not availed to inculcate, and which Mrs. Curtis's present restless
anxiety rendered almost impossible. To hinder her from constantly
aggravating the fever on the nerves by her fidgeting solicitude was
beyond all power save his own, and that when he was actually in the
house.