Mr. Brewer still made experiments with ten pounds. He helped Lady
Caroline in her many charities, as long as her charities were confined
to food and clothing, so much a week to the poor, and getting good
nursing for the sick. But once Lady Caroline used that charity purse
for purposes of "souping"--it has become an English word, so I do not
stop to explain it--and then Mr. Brewer scolded her. Nobody had ever
disputed any point with Lady Caroline. But Mr. Brewer explained, with
a most unexpected lucidity, how it would be _right_ for him to make
her a Catholic, and yet _wrong_ for her to try her notions of
conversion on him.
Lady Caroline kept up the quarrel for two years. She upbraided him for
his neglect, on his own principles, of Claudia. She abused him for the
different conduct pursued about his son. Mr. Brewer confessed his
faults and stood by his rights at the same time. Two whole years Lady
Caroline quarrelled, and Mr. Brewer never left the field. And
afterward, some time after, when Lady Caroline was in her last
illness, she said: "I believe that man Brewer may be right after all."
When she was dead young Mary Lorimer had double the sum that had
been originally offered, and Freddy her largest diamond ring.
But another thing had to come out of all this. Mrs. Brewer became a
Catholic; and that fact had made her recall her daughter to her
side--that fact had made Horace Erskine say, at the inn at Hull, that
he dreaded for the girl he, spoke to the influence of the home and the
people she was going to--that fact had brought that passion of tears
to Mary Lorimer's eyes, and had made her feel so angrily that he had
taken an advantage of her.
Here, then, we are back again to the time at which we began the story.
Mary got home and was welcomed.
The day after their arrival, if we leave Beremouth and its people, and
go into Marston to Mrs. Morier, "old Mrs. Morier" they called her now,
we shall see Jenifer walk into the pleasant upstairs drawing-room,
where the china glittered on comer-shelves, and large jars stood under
the long inlaid table, and say to her mistress: "Eleanor is come, if
you please, ma'am."
Mrs. Morier looked up from her knitting. She had been sitting by the
window, and the beautiful old lady looked like a picture, as Jenifer
often declared, as she turned the face shadowed by fine lace toward
her servant with a sweet, gentle air, and smiling said, "And so you
want to go to Clayton--and Eleanor is to stay till you come back?"
"Yes, ma'am--it's the anniversary." "Go, then," said the gentle lady.
"And you must not leave me out of your prayers, my good Jenifer; for
you may be sure that I respect and value them." "I'll be back in good
time," said Jenifer; and the door closed, and Mrs. Morier continued
her knitting.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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