“My dear friend,” said the rector, “I hope you don’t think it is only when you are dying that you have need of good advice and the counsel of your clergyman. I wish it was more general to seek it always. What am I here for but to be at the service of my parishioners night and day? And every one who is in mental difficulty or distress has a double claim upon me. You may speak with perfect freedom--whatever is said to me is sacred.” “Then you knew I wanted to speak to you?” said Mrs. Preston. “Thank you, you are very kind. I am not ungrateful. But you knew I wanted to ask your assistance? Somebody sent for you, perhaps?” “I can not say I was sent for,” said Mr. Hardcastle--with a little confusion, “but I heard--you know, in a country place the faintest wish you can express takes wings to itself, and becomes known everywhere. I understood--I heard--from various quarters--that if I came here--I might be of use to you.” All the answer Mrs. Preston made to this was to turn round to the head of the bed where Pamela stood, half hidden, in the corner. “That you might have something to tell him a little sooner!” she said. Her voice, though it was very low, so low as to be inaudible to the visitor, was bitter and sharp with pain, and she cast a glance full of reproach and anguish at her only child. She thought she had been betrayed. She thought that, for the lover’s sake, who was dearer than father or mother, her own nursling had forfeited her trust. It was a bitter thought, and she was ill, and weak, and excited, and her mind distorted, so that she could not see things in their proper light. The bitterness was such that Pamela, utterly innocent as she was, sank before it. She did not know what she had done. She did not understand what her mother’s look meant; but she shrank back among the curtains as if she had been really guilty, and it brought to a climax her sense of utter confusion and dismay. “I will tell you what the case is,” Mrs. Preston added quickly, the color coming back to her cheek. “I am not in very good health, as you see, but I have something very important to do before I die. It concerns the comfort of my child. So far as I am involved, it would not matter--it would not matter--for I shall not live long,” she added with a certain plaintive tremor of self-pity in her voice. “It is all for Pamela, sir--though Pamela--but lately I grew frightened, and thought myself worse; and I told them--I told _her_--that if I was no better next Tuesday, they were to send for you. I would not trouble you if I were well enough myself. It was in case I should not be able, and I thought of asking your help; that is how it was. I suppose it was their curiosity. Curiosity is not a sin: but--they say I am not worse--they say I am even a little better. So I will not trouble you, Mr. Hardcastle. By that time I shall be able for what I have to do.”